


this is your baptism

by deluxemycroft



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Betrayal, Bisexual Clint Barton, Bondage, Brainwashing, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Civil War Team Captain America, Codependency, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Deaf Clint Barton, Depression, Forced Prostitution, Forced Relationship, Human Experimentation, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra Bucky Barnes, Hydra Clint Barton, Hydra Natasha Romanov, Hydra!Clint, Hydra!Natasha, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mind Manipulation, Non-Consensual Bondage, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Reluctant Sex, Rough Sex, SHIELD, Sex Work, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Slavery, Sexual Violence, Sokovia Accords, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Relationships, Wakanda (Marvel), Wakandan Technology, hydra!bucky, okay that's enough tags i'm sorry, past suicide attempt(s), sexual abuse of a minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:15:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22344685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deluxemycroft/pseuds/deluxemycroft
Summary: If a man is to be called good, then he must do good.Clint Barton is not a good man, and he does not do good.But he tries. Oh, how he tries.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Brock Rumlow, Clint Barton/Original Female Character(s), Clint Barton/Original Male Character(s), James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Comments: 46
Kudos: 198





	1. on the edge of the dark

**Author's Note:**

> clint barton is my favorite avenger (thor comes in at a close second) and for some reason, i seem to show my love for him by beating the absolute shit out of him. i'd also like to say that the opinions expressed in this fic are not mine and that its a work of fiction and i believe that only good nazi is a dead nazi. that being said, i can't seem to stop writing hydra clint, so please forgive me for that. i'm also fully team cap but apparently had a lot of unresolved anger towards steve rogers that i used this fic to work through, so just heads up about that. i also don’t really like the ‘sam wilson is everyone’s therapist’ trope, but he kinda had to fill that role for this fic, so that’s in here too. also comics canon is that clint is like 6'3 and bucky is like...5'9, so just imagine that. we're here for tall clint
> 
> this fic was inspired by two things: the scene of bucky walking down the car in the winter soldier (you know what i mean), and the thought that the only strike team that wasn’t hydra was strike team delta. the bucky scene inspired a thought of bucky really hurting clint, and the strike team inspired the thought of delta team actually being hydra this whole time.
> 
> chapter titles are from 'edge of the dark' by armon jay.
> 
> this fic is complete, i'll post a chapter every few days.
> 
> this is dark. real dark. read the warnings.  
> i tried to warn for everything i could.
> 
> not beta'd, just edited by me.

They have to stop for gas, and Natasha uses the time to run around the gas station to the payphone at the side. She hits a number that no one else on Earth knows, waits three rings, and then hangs up. She then dials the number again and he answers right after the first ring.

“He knows,” Natasha tells him.

He lets out a sigh. “Alright. Fuck. What’s the plan?”

“He’s going after the Soldier.”

As expected, he hangs up. She makes it back to the car by the time Steve comes out of the gas station, shaking his head at gas prices. A few minutes later, and they’re on their way again.

As they drive further, Steve gets quieter. Nat doesn’t expect anything else.

“What would it take?” Steve finally asks, his voice soft and hurt. “To betray everything like that? Your country, your morals, your _people_. I can’t figure it out.”

Natasha wonders what he’ll do if— _when_ —he finds out. He’ll probably kill her. “I don’t know,” she tells him. “I never understood.”

* * *

Clint looks down from the bridge as the Soldier goes after Natasha. He won’t kill her, but he’ll maim her. She knows but she can’t let on that she knows. Clint’s actually kind of impressed when it turns out that she just recorded her voice.

One of the other agents comes up behind him, gives him a dirty smile. Clint shifts uncomfortably and looks away from him. “Your boy down there is gonna kill Captain America,” the agent jeers at him. “You think they’ll let him live if he does that?”

Clint strikes out a hand, grabs the little shit by the neck, knocks him down. “Shut up,” he snarls. “You’re here as back-up for the back-up, you insignificant little ant. Now shut the fuck up.”

Clint looks back down as Rogers throws his shield and the Soldier catches it, throws it back. They fight and Clint winces as the Soldier’s muzzle finally comes off.

“Bucky?” Rogers asks.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

Once they’re all restrained and in the van, the Soldier returns to Clint. He pins Clint against the bridge railing and rucks up his shirt, pats him down, checks him for injury, his usual post-op routine. “I’m fine,” Clint assures him, voice soft. “I’m fine.” He wants to ask if the Soldier recognized Rogers, if he knows who he is, but he almost doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Barton!” Rumlow barks. “Get it in the van!”

At least Nat is with them. That’s a relief. And maybe they really will stop Project Insight, although Clint doesn’t have any faith. Not in anyone, not anymore. The Soldier obediently follows Clint back to the van and sits in the restrained chair in the back, watches Clint avidly as Clint straps him down and then sits in the jump seat next to the Soldier’s chair. The driver, another HYDRA agent, drives off without asking if they’re good or secured.

Clint looks down at his hands, flexes his fingers, then looks up at the Soldier. “You alright?” he asks, can’t help himself, knows he won’t get an answer. The Soldier is just staring at him as if Clint is going to be taken away from him at any second; Clint doesn’t blame him. He feels the same way. The Soldier doesn’t say anything, of course, but his metal hand twitches. Clint reaches out, takes his hand. “It’ll be alright,” Clint tells him. The Soldier doesn’t do anything, just continues watching him.

Once they arrive—Clint is fairly sure it’s below a bank, but he’s never been allowed upstairs—Clint unstraps the Soldier and escorts him into the vault. The Soldier sits down in the Chair and Clint frowns at him. He looks...vacant. Strange. Maybe he does remember Rogers. Clint isn’t sure if he wants him to or not.

Clint takes his seat to the Soldier’s right as one of the HYDRA scientists comes in. The Soldier props his arm up and the scientist begins to fix it. His eyes are dark and hollow and he looks hurt. Clint glances curiously over him and leans over to pull off the Soldier’s shirt to make sure he’s not injured. The scientist glares at him but doesn’t say anything. 

The Soldier jerks, punches the scientist, surges to his feet. Clint grabs his arm and the Soldier whirls on him.

“Sit down,” Clint pleads, and the Soldier frowns at him. Clint slowly stands up but the Soldier still looks mad. He’ll bring down this whole place if Clint doesn’t keep a lid on him.

“Barton!” Alexander Pierce barks from the gate and Clint stiffens. The Soldier takes note and blinks then comes back to himself, looking Clint up and down as if he could be hurt. “Isn’t your entire job to restrain the Soldier? Are you not doing your job?”

It’s all bark and no bite, Clint knows that. The Soldier won’t listen to them without Clint. But they can also hurt Clint, hurt him in ways that he knows he’ll never recover from. The Soldier frowns up at him. “Sit down,” Clint tells the Soldier, voice firm, and he pushes him back towards the Chair. “Stay there.”

The Soldier watches him as Clint retakes his own seat, and then Pierce comes in, followed by Rumlow and various other agents. One of them grabs Clint’s arm and drags him out, down to another vault, where he shoves Clint into a chair and then points a gun at him so he won’t go anywhere.

A few minutes later, the lights flicker as they use the Chair, and faintly, Clint can hear the Soldier’s screams. He winces, tips forward to scrub his hands over his face.

“Barton,” Pierce says from the doorway, and Clint looks up at him. Pierce tells the agent to leave them and once they’re alone, Pierce walks into the room. He stands over Clint like a god. “Why does he remember Captain America?”

“I don’t know,” Clint sighs. He winces. If this were anyone else, he wouldn’t say it, but it’s Pierce, so he says, “Maybe some things are just buried too deep, y’know?”

That pisses Pierce off, but most things Clint says piss Pierce off, so he doesn’t really care much about it. “You know you’re only alive because if your connection to the Soldier,” Pierce tells him, tone almost conversational, and Clint nods. “He has one final mission. Once that’s finished, your position here will be obsolete.” Pierce smiles at him and it’s the way a shark smiles when they’ve finally cornered their prey. Clint knows Pierce hates him; the feeling is mutual. “When I can finally kill you,” Pierce tells him, voice low, “I am going to take my time with it. I will _crush_ you.”

“Good luck with that,” Clint tells him, and he means it. Clint has the most effective bodyguard in the world and as long as he’s still alive, no one's gonna hurt him. They won’t kill the Soldier, not for a long time. HYDRA has a lot of research left to do on him yet.

Pierce glares at him and sweeps out.

Clint puts his head in his hands. He waits for an agent to come back and collect him, and he goes. 

They take him to a familiar room. There’s a cold metal table in the middle, an entire wall of cabinets on the far wall. Clint is well acquainted with what’s in those cabinets. A few other agents come in and all point their guns at him. Clint holds up his hands and then begins to strip down. He knows what comes next. He knows it's better to just comply than fight. But his hands still shake.

Once he’s naked, they herd him back to the table, and he lays over it, lets them strap his arms down so he can’t fight. They take out his hearing aids and put them just out of reach. He can crane his head back and see that they’re all standing behind him. One of them is holding a handheld camera; Clint knows Pierce likes to watch this. One of the agents pulls on a pair of gloves and brings over a bottle of lube, and Clint grits his teeth as cold, gloved fingers prod at his hole. They slide in easily—his body is used to this by now—and his head drops to the cold table.

The table never seems to warm up. It’s cold where it presses into his hips, where his chest is pressed against it, where his arms are stretched up. He leans his head against the cold table, closes his eyes, wills his body to open further so the agent can stop touching him. He slides two fingers inside Clint, scissors them out, stretches him so he won’t be torn. They used to do a lot more than just stretch him; Clint used to have to get _warmed up_ before the Soldier found out about that and killed half of them. The Soldier doesn’t care if they watch but he cares if they touch.

The agent hurriedly pulls his hand out and Clint can feel a bit of air movement as he moves away. He picks his head up again and peers back over his shoulder to see the Soldier being escorted in, eyes already locked on Clint. Technically, it wasn’t a successful mission, but Clint knows what they’re doing: trying to erase every single instance of Steve Rogers inside the Soldier’s mind. They think that Clint can replace Rogers. Clint has no idea if it’s working or not.

The Soldier shoves away from his handlers and strides over to Clint, eyes burning, already hard in his pants. His hands land on Clint’s hips, one warm and one cold, and Clint pushes back into him, arches his back, eyes fluttering shut as the Soldier noses up his back, nips his neck, presses quick kisses to his jaw and the corner of his mouth. They used to not let the Soldier take his time, made him rush, but he responds better to the Chair and doesn’t get so unstable if they let him do what he wants. He only listens to them because he has Clint anyway, so HYDRA doesn’t have much choice.

The Soldier picks up Clint’s hearing aids, slides them back into his ears, and Clint smiles a bit. The Soldier doesn’t always remember he can’t hear or what the little devices do; they must’ve only used the Chair once. 

“Clint,” the Soldier rumbles, and he presses his hips, _finally_ , to Clint’s ass. Clint can feel how hard he is, how hot he is, how ready he is. “Mine. All mine.”

“Yours,” Clint breathes, and he smiles.

This is the only time the Soldier talks to him. The rest of the time, it’s all grunts and significant looks and pushing him around. He doesn’t mind; it could be worse. He opens his eyes, cranes his head to look back over his shoulder to see the Soldier opening the fly on his pants. The Soldier pulls himself out, manages to remember to slick himself up, and then kicks Clint’s feet apart, taking himself in hand and sliding inside. Clint’s body welcomes him home.

Clint moans, pushes back into him, feeling his own cock start to harden against the edge of the table. The Soldier’s hands lock on his hips and he slowly begins to thrust, huge cock sliding in and out of Clint, leaning forward to mouth over the back of Clint’s neck. The Soldier has always liked biting, has ever since the first time. Clint has scars all over his neck and shoulders and back from the Soldier biting him. 

Teeth sink in as the Soldier’s hips move faster and faster, as his hands tighten on Clint’s hips, as his cock spears into him, rubbing against his prostate, and Clint can feel the Soldier’s breath quicken on his neck. He can hear his own moans and strains against the restraints; he wants to twist around and hold on, wishes the sex was calmer and more loving, but Clint is never going to get what he wants. At least he has this. 

The Soldier’s metal hand pulls away from his hip and slides around him, takes Clint’s half-hard cock in his hand, spreads his pre-come up and down to slick him up. He’s always been so wet, dripping all over the place, and the Soldier growls in his ear. Sometimes he doesn’t remember to take care of Clint, but he’s doing so well this time. 

“Clint,” the Soldier snarls, fingernails digging into Clint’s skin, and his metal hand tightens around his cock. Clint feels so full, so warm, and he throws his head back, the Soldier nosing over him to nip at the corner of his mouth. “Clint,” he says again, deeper and more meaningful, and Clint tightens as best as he can, feeling as the Soldier’s hips stutter and then fills him up. The Soldier pants in his ear, noses at his neck, and then quickly works to get Clint off; it just takes a few strokes and then Clint is coming as well, screwing his eyes shut, gasping as the Soldier pumps him just like he likes.

The agents give them a couple minutes together, a couple minutes for the Soldier to pull himself out of Clint and kneel behind him to lick him clean, and then to mouth up Clint’s back, biting his vertebrae. His hands smooth over Clint’s sides, reach underneath to pinch his cold nipples, smiling against Clint’s shoulder when he lets out a moan. “Clint,” the Soldier says, tone strangely soft, and then one of the agents behind them clears their throat.

“You’re done,” the agent tells them, and Clint lets out a groan of protest as the Soldier steps back from him. He looks back over his shoulder to see the Soldier take a wet cloth to clean himself up and then tuck himself back in his pants. The Soldier looks at him, gives him a warm look, and lets himself be led away.

Clint sags against the table. “Y’all gonna let me out?” he calls when none of them move to unstrap him.

One of the agents snorts and then he hears footsteps out in the hall.

“Everyone out!” Rumlow barks, and Clint starts fighting immediately. The restraints are for someone much stronger than him—the Soldier—and he knows there’s no way out. But he can’t help himself; even after all this time, he still fights. “Except for you,” Rumlow tells one of them. “You stay here. Video this.” The door slams shut and Rumlow walks up to Clint, hands slotting over his hips in the exact same spot where the Soldier held him. “Looks like I’m going to make my own use of you, Barton,” Rumlow snarls at him, a smile in his voice.

“No,” Clint snarls, trying to kick back at him, trying to squirm loose, but he knows it’s a lost cause. Rumlow kicks his feet apart, keeps his legs apart with his knees, and Clint can hear him undoing the fly on his pants. “He’ll kill you,” Clint rasps out. “He’ll know and he’ll kill you.”

“I waited until he was good and gone,” Rumlow tells him, breath puffing over the back of Clint’s neck, and Clint can feel the heat radiating off him. Rumlow has always ran so fuckin’ hot. Clint hates that he knows that. “He’ll never find out.”

When he sinks inside Clint, Rumlow lets out a low groan. Clint whimpers, squeezes his eyes shut, tries not to think about it. The Soldier, at least recently, cares about him, and it comes through in the way he fucks Clint. But Rumlow hates him and fucks him like he hates him. He uses Clint fast and hard and unyielding, makes him know that Rumlow thinks he’s nothing, that he’s less than nothing, and then Clint stiffens as Rumlow finds his prostate and begins to thrust slow and purposefully against it.

“I liked you better when you were younger,” Rumlow says, a bit of breathiness in his voice. “You were tighter back then. Now you’re all old and used up. Loose old whore.” Clint can hear the mean smile in his voice. “Maybe the Soldier will get tired of you and we can really put you to use. You know this is all you’re good for.”

Clint snarls. He can hear the agent behind Rumlow’s breath quicken. He cranes his neck to see that he’s still videoing and Clint glares at him, bares his teeth. “I’m going to kill you,” he tells Rumlow, letting out a punched out breath as Rumlow begins to fuck him faster and harder. He says it only because he knows they won’t kill him for it; he’s too valuable. Maybe he’d say it anyway. “One day, Rumlow, I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Rumlow chuckles. “Good luck with that, Barton.” He pulls out, shoves back in, and twists his hips. Clint knows he does that right before he comes. Rumlow lets out a stuttering breath and shoves his hips forward, heat filling Clint up. Rumlow sags forward, leaning on Clint’s back as he regains his breath. “Never liked sloppy seconds,” Rumlow tells him. “But you’re still pretty good, even for an old bitch. Tell me, who’s better? Me or the Soldier?”

He pulls out of Clint without waiting for an answer and tucks himself back in his pants, then leans forward and quickly undoes the straps holding Clint down to the table. Clint crumples to the floor, and tries to lunge for Rumlow’s feet to try and take him down, but his legs are too weak and he falls back to the floor. Rumlow snorts at him and kicks him in the side, then he and the agent leave, leaving Clint on the floor.

The first few times this had happened, Clint had curled up in the corner and cried. He’d thought he was tough, back then, back as a kid, but he soon learned different. But he’s used to it now, and he gives himself a couple minutes of taking deep breaths and trying to push Rumlow’s come out of him before he grabs the side of the table and hauls himself up. He stands next to the cold metal table as his legs regain strength—one of the reasons they have him bent over like that is not just for ease of access but because it stretches out his legs and he loses blood flow and even if he gets loose, he can’t run—and then he hobbles over to the cabinets.

He pulls open a drawer and begins to take care of himself. He cleans himself out, twists himself around to try to put antiseptic on the bite marks, and pats himself down to make sure there’s nothing severely hurt. He’s not torn but he’s sore, so he takes a heavy duty pain med, and then takes out a couple more for the next couple days. It always hurts more the day after, he’s found.

His ass feels empty. It’s such a peculiar feeling, but he’s used to it. He makes sure he didn’t tear and then opens another cabinet and finds clean clothing for himself. He’s sore but he manages to pull it all on, and then sits down on the floor with a wince and a quiet groan to pull his boots on. He makes sure he has the extra pain pills in his pocket. They used to keep a whole bottle for him in there, but after he tried to kill himself, they just leave a few pills, nothing more than what would just make him sleep for a long time. Then he leaves, following the agent posted up outside the door to the van waiting in the parking garage for him. 

“Where’m I goin’?” he asks the driver.

“Shut up,” the driver tells him, and Clint sighs and shuts up.

* * *

Afterwards, after all of it, after the Helicarriers go down and Pierce is finally fucking dead, Clint finds the Soldier dragging Rogers out of the water.

“Soldier?” he asks, running up to him, and the Soldier stops, shoulders sagging, and then he turns and looks at Clint.

“Here,” the Soldier grits out, holding out a hand, and Clint goes to him. For a moment, he thinks the Soldier is going to kill him, and Clint wouldn’t really blame him. But all the Soldier does is slot his metal hand over the back of Clint’s neck and pull him in close, leaning up to press their foreheads together. “Clint,” he breathes out, sounding relieved. “ _Clint._ ”

“I know,” Clint murmurs. “I’m here.”

They stand together for a minute before the phone in Clint’s pocket begins to ring. He pulls back and the Soldier takes his hand, pulls him away, away from Rogers on the shore, away from the destruction behind them. Clint holds the phone up. “Yeah?”

“It’s over,” Natasha tells him. “Where are you?”

“With the Soldier,” Clint says back, frowning at the way the Soldier’s shoulders tense. “Rogers is on the shore of the Potomoc. He’s alive. You’ll take care of him?”

“Yeah, of course. We’ll find him. Uh, Fury’s alive. He’s probably gonna come for you.”

“Let him,” Clint sighs. “We’ll go underground. I’ll keep this phone. Stay safe, Nat.”

“You too, Barton.” She pauses and Clint goes to hang up, but then she says, “His real name is James.”

“Oh. Uh, thanks.” He hangs up, takes the battery out, slides the phone back into his pocket, and then reaches forward to take the Soldier’s hand again. “James?”

Long brown hair swings around his face as the Soldier looks back at him. “That’s what he said my name is,” the Soldier grinds out.

“They never told me you had a name,” Clint tells him, keeping his voice quiet. “I asked once and, uh, it didn’t go well. Do you want me to call you James?”

The Soldier doesn’t say anything. They stay quiet and Clint steals a car for them, slides into the driver’s seat when the Soldier looks too confused to figure it out. The Soldier stares at him as Clint hotwires the car and when he doesn’t buckle himself in, Clint sighs and reaches across him to pull the strap over, then he buckles the Soldier in and they drive off. Clint is probably the only person on Earth prepared for how the next few days are going to go with the Soldier, and he’s glad they’re back together.

Clint finds himself talking, partly because he’s nervous and partly because he’s not good at being quiet. “I have a safehouse,” he tells the Soldier. “We’ll hole up there. Uh, no one knows about it. Nat knows where it is, but she’s never been there.” He glances at the Soldier out of the corner of his eye. They’re on hour two of the highway, towns and houses and fields flying by. “You alright?”

The Soldier frowns at him. He’s been frowning for awhile. He looks down at his crotch and Clint tries not to wince. He’s still kind of sore; it’s barely been 24 hours after all, but he’ll find some lube or something and they’ll make it work. But then the Soldier says, “I have to use the bathroom.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.” They pull off at the next gas station and Clint shows the Soldier where the bathroom is, and then scrounges around the car until he finds a few bills and ducks inside to get a couple bags of food and some water and the biggest tube of lube they have. He puts the rest of the money on the pump and fills up the tank. By the time he’s done, the Soldier still isn’t out of the bathroom, so Clint knocks on the door.

“James? Soldier?” he calls lowly. They’re lucky that no one else is around but he wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t wanted ads out for the both of them now. There’s a bang from inside the bathroom and then the door is yanked open. The Soldier is breathing heavily, eyes wild, hair mussed, and Clint sighs at him. “What’s wrong, man?”

“Head hurts,” the Soldier grinds out, and Clint hits the light switch, the room going dark.

“We gotta get outta here,” Clint tells him, letting the door shut behind him, and he finds the Soldier in the dark. Hands clamp over his hips in a familiar way and Clint sighs. “Can you wait? I’ll get us a room tonight. But we gotta get a move on.”

The Soldier leans in close, sniffs around Clint’s neck, noses under his chin. “How much further?” the Soldier asks, his voice low. It’s strange to hear him talking so much. Clint is used to grunts and just his own name. “I’ll wait,” the Soldier tells him, and leans up to bite at Clint’s neck. He grinds the flesh in between his teeth and Clint groans, hands sliding up to snag in the Soldier’s vest. He’s gonna have to get them different clothes soon.

“Couple more days. Let’s go,” Clint says once the Soldier pulls back, and he opens the door to tug the Soldier out of the bathroom and back to their stolen car. Once they’re inside and Clint has buckled the Soldier in, Clint asks, keeping his tone calm and conversational, “So, do you want me to call you James?”

The Soldier makes a confused sound. He has Clint’s right hand wrapped in both of his, and every few minutes, he holds his metal hand up to Clint’s, palms touching, as if he’s comparing them. “That...that man...he called me Bucky.”

“I can call you Bucky,” Clint offers up, not looking at him. “Or James. Or Barnes. Or Soldier. Or, hell, pick a brand new one. Just let me know.”

The Soldier grunts and doesn’t say anything. He’s struggling, Clint knows that. He hasn’t been out of cryo without the Chair to stabilize him for this long before. He’s not _supposed_ to be out of cryo for this long. It messes him up. But Clint’s here now, and he’ll help. He’s good at helping.

“Is Clint your name?” the Soldier grinds out after a silent hour. He’s examining Clint’s knuckles.

“Yeah,” Clint sighs. “My first name. My middle name is Francis, my last name is Barton. You can keep calling me Clint, if you want.”

The Soldier nods. “My Clint,” he says, and his voice is low and cautious. Clint nods immediately.

“Your Clint,” he agrees. “Always your Clint.”

He glances over a couple minutes later and the Soldier is asleep. Clint smiles at him and drives off into the night.


	2. i wait for the sun to rise

It’s a few days later when they make it to Clint’s safehouse. They’d slept in the car one night and Clint had broken into an empty house off the highway for the other night, and the Soldier had fucked him for the first time in a bed. “Better than when you’re on the table,” the Soldier had told him afterwards, and then he’d leaned up and kissed Clint like he’d wanted to do that for years. “No more tables.”

The Soldier still hasn’t told Clint what he wants to be called. Clint has been experimenting with James and Bucky, but the Soldier doesn’t really respond to either. He doesn’t seem to like being called the Soldier, but it’s the only thing he responds to. Clint has kind of resorted to ‘Hey, you, man,’ and kind of feels like a bastard whenever he uses it, but it seems to work.

His safehouse is an isolated house in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, Iowa. They don’t have neighbors for about five miles, and there’s enough trees and empty space around them that no one will be able to sneak up on them. He pulls the stolen car up to the barn, climbs out to yank open the doors, and then drives it in. He kills the engine and glances over at the Soldier, who is staring straight ahead.

“Do you need an order?” Clint asks softly, trying to be gentle about it. The Soldier clenches his jaw and Clint wants to reach out and brush his fingers over the line of it, but he stops himself. When the Soldier doesn’t say anything, Clint sighs. “Get out of the car, Soldier, and follow me into the house.”

Tension seeps out of the Soldier’s shoulders and he nods once, sharp, and clambers out of the car to follow Clint out of the barn, stands behind him as he closes the doors, and then follows him into the house. Clint herds him to a couch and then goes out back to turn on the water and electricity and jumps when he turns around and the Soldier is standing right behind him.

He grins down at him. “You good?” he asks, walking back inside and sighing in relief as the switch he flicks works and the lights turn on.

“Didn’t want you to be alone,” the Soldier tells him, voice quiet, and Clint flushes, rubs the back of his neck. For a brain-washed assassin, the guy can be pretty nice at times. He shows the Soldier upstairs, shows him the guest rooms, and then gives him some clothes. Clint showers, cleans himself out just in case, and then dresses himself in comfortable sweats and an old hoodie. He cleans out his ears, puts his hearing aids back in, and listens for a moment, but doesn’t hear anything outside his room. He opens the bedroom door to see the Soldier standing outside of it, absolutely buck-ass naked, hair dripping everywhere, and a murderous look on his face. 

Clint raises an eyebrow at him. “You need something?”

The Soldier barges past him and looks around Clint’s room. “I’m sleeping with you,” he announces. Clint shrugs. He doesn’t have any reason to have the Soldier sleep in another room; he just kinda figured the guy would want his own space. “I have to…” he trails off and picks up one of Clint’s wet towels which, yeah, he’d just dropped on the floor. The Soldier stares at it.

“That’s a towel,” Clint offers up, hopeful he’s being helpful. He’s seen the Soldier forget names of stuff before. “You could probably use one. You’re soakin’ wet, man.”

The Soldier glares at him and then blinks a few times, lifting a hand to touch his wet hair. “Wet,” he repeats, and that makes him frown. Clint rolls his eyes and picks up a mostly-dry towel that he’d also dropped to the floor and wraps it around the Soldier’s head and gently tousells his hair to a state resembling dryness. The Soldier stares at him the entire time, something strange on his face.

Clint grins down at him and then digs through his drawers to pull out another pair of sweatpants and a hoodie for the Soldier, who slowly puts them on, not looking away from Clint as he does. Then Clint leads him back downstairs and it takes him about a minute of digging through the cabinets to realize he has no food other than some non-perishables. The fridge was turned off, so he plugs it back in, starts making a grocery list. They need everything, and Clint has a good estimate of how many calories the Soldier needs to maintain condition, so they need a lot of everything. Good thing he has a lot of cash stored away.

“I want to be called Bucky,” the Soldier says while he’s watching Clint soak rice and beans. Then he grimaces. “No.”

Clint glances at him over his shoulder and shrugs the other one. “You can call yourself whatever you want,” he tells the Soldier. He turns back to the rice. “You were born as James Buchanan Barnes. But you can pick a new name, if you want.”

“I like your name,” the Soldier tells him.

Clint smiles to himself. “Hey, my last name is Barton. Barnes is pretty close to that, right?”

The Soldier makes a curious noise and Clint stirs the rice again and then turns to look at him. “The man on the bridge called me Bucky.”

“He knew you as Bucky,” Clint told him. “And _his_ name is Steve.”

The Soldier glares at him and Clint grins at him. “Too many names,” the Soldier grinds out, shaking his head. He rubs his metal hand over his forehead. “Just like your name. Clint.”

“It’s a good name,” Clint agrees, “but we can’t have the same name. You don’t have to pick now, you know. Take your time, man, we got all the time in the world.”

The Soldier goes quiet at that and Clint turns back to cooking, and when it’s done, he serves the Soldier up a bowl first and makes sure he eats half of it before getting his own food. His priority for the last twenty-odd years has always been the Soldier and it’s a habit that doesn’t break easily. Clint doubts he’ll ever be able to do anything else, or will ever _want_ to do anything else.

The Soldier finishes his food and then watches Clint eat with heated eyes. Clint blushes and finishes quickly, then takes their bowls over to the sink and glances back at him. “How do you want me?” he asks, trying to keep his voice low. He moves back over to the table and tries to remember where he left the lube. Clint leans against the table and the Soldier surges to his feet, hands slotting into their spot on Clint’s hips, fingertips sliding under the waist to press against his skin. 

“No tables,” the Soldier growls against his skin, and he pulls Clint to the couch. The Soldier looks down at it and then sits down, pulling Clint into his lap, and Clint smiles down at him, leaning forward for a kiss. He hopes he gets to keep this. He _really_ wants to keep this.

The Soldier kisses him and Clint can feel the cracks in his mind, how the man he was is slowly and surely breaking through. Clint wonders how many other people he’s kissed like this, like he knows what he’s doing, like he’s confident and sure of himself and Clint wonders if he was kind of a jerk because he kisses like he knows what he wants and he’s going to get it regardless. It makes Clint smile. 

The Soldier’s hand slips down the back of Clint’s pants to press at Clint’s hole, and then his head rears back. “Not wet,” the Soldier mutters, brow furrowed. Clint chuckles at him, twisting his hips to grind down on the Soldier’s hardening cock.

“They used to prepare me before you came in,” Clint tells him. “So you wouldn’t have to.”

The Soldier growls and suddenly twists them around so Clint is flat on his back on the couch and the Soldier is hovering over him, looking furious. “Mine,” the Soldier snarls, and he bites down on Clint’s jaw, down his neck, rips and tugs at his hoodie until it shreds in his hands and he continues biting down his chest, biting at his nipples and his stomach until Clint is gasping and whimpering and twisting his hips up against the Soldier, against his own hard cock. “Mine,” the Soldier says again, nosing up at Clint’s armpit and then biting at the tender skin around it. 

Clint yelps and the Soldier snickers, bites him again. “Yours,” he gasps out.

“How do I make you slick?” the Soldier asks, sliding his metal hand down to stroke over Clint’s dick and fondle his balls and then prod at his hole. Clint whimpers.

“There’s lube in my room,” Clint whines out. “In one of the nightstands.” ‘Please don’t fuck me without lube,’ he wants to say, but he doesn’t. The Soldier’s done it before, long before this, and Clint doubts he remembers, or ever will remember. The Soldier looks over his face and then presses a quick kiss to Clint’s mouth, then is suddenly gone, quick footsteps going up the stairs. Clint takes in a few deep breaths and tries to calm himself down. This is his place in the world, his job, and he _likes_ his job. He’s good at his job. He likes taking care of the Soldier. He’s just sore, that’s all. He won’t say no, but he’d like...there’s things they can do that aren’t penetrative sex. He’ll get a book or something when he goes into town to get groceries.

The Soldier rushes back downstairs and Clint greets him with a smile. The Soldier brought lube, lotion, body wash, and shampoo, and drops them all on the coffee table. He gives Clint such a lost, desperate look that Clint sits up and grins at him. He picks up the lube and then points at the rest of it. “That’s lotion,” he says. “You use it to keep your skin from getting dry. The body wash is to clean yourself up in the shower. The shampoo is to clean your hair.” He gives the Soldier’s own hair a pointed look. “I’ll show you how to do that later.” He picks up the lube and gives the Soldier a saucy wink. “I’ll show you how to use this.”

With that, Clint kicks off his sweats and lays back down on the couch. The Soldier kneels up between his thighs and watches avidly as Clint reaches down behind himself and begins to open himself up. “Have I ever done this for you?” the Soldier asks, breathless, eyes locked on Clint’s fingers inside of himself. Clint thinks about it and then shakes his head. His head is cloudy with arousal but he doesn’t think so.

“You like to clean me out afterwards,” Clint gasps out as he finds his prostate, and he watches avidly as the Soldier’s eyes darken. “You like putting your mouth on me.”

Suddenly, the Soldier pulls Clint’s fingers out of him and wraps his arms around Clint’s thighs, lifts him up until all his weight is resting on his neck and shoulders, and presses his mouth to Clint’s hole. Clint writhes at the touch, whimpers at the way the Soldier kisses him down there, mouth moving, tongue sliding inside.

“Glad—glad I got edible lube,” he gasps out, voice slipping into a whimper as the Soldier’s tongue slides deeper inside. They’ve never got this type of time before; Clint feels greedy with it, like now that he has it he can never go back. The Soldier slides a finger in alongside his tongue and Clint can’t help the way his hips pulse. He reaches up to stroke his cock and the Soldier growls against Clint’s hole to stop him. Clint whines. “Soldier, _please._ ”

The Soldier growls again and Clint can feel how his breath speeds up. He pulls his mouth off Clint and bites at each of his cheeks, slides another finger inside of Clint, and then lowers him slowly, surging up on his knees to take himself in hand.

Clint scrabbles for the bottle of lube and pushes it at the Soldier. “Use it,” he begs, and smiles when the Soldier complies. The Soldier sinks slowly inside of him and they both let out identical groans.

To his surprise, the Soldier leans forward and kisses him, and Clint smiles against his mouth and kisses back. “Clint,” the Soldier breathes into his mouth, hips pumping slowly, and his hands slide up Clint’s sides to curl around his back, prop his hips up higher for a better angle. To Clint’s surprise, he’s completely hard, and he throws his head back and squeezes his eyes shut when the Soldier’s cock rubs against his prostate.

It’s _good_. It’s so good that it makes tears rise up in Clint’s eyes. It’s never been this good. It’s warm and slow and it doesn’t hurt and it feels _so good_. The Soldier makes a curious noise and he moves his hands up to cup Clint’s jaw, nosing at his squeezed-shut eyes. “Hurt?” the Soldier asks, hips still pumping, cock still thrusting slowly and deeply inside of him.

“No,” Clint whispers. “Just feels so good.” He swallows, peeks his eyes open to see the Soldier looking up at him from where he’s biting underneath Clint’s chin at the soft skin there. “Never felt this good before.”

The Soldier makes a curious sound at that but doesn’t say anything. He drops his metal hand down and wraps it around Clint’s weeping cock, slicking him up with Clint’s own copious pre-come. “Wet,” the Soldier murmurs. “I remember this.”

Clint grins at him, leans his head into the hand still cupping his jaw. The Soldier’s fingernails scratch lightly at his scalp and it sends shivers down Clint’s spine. “What else do you remember?” he asks with a slow smile.

The Soldier’s thrusts start growing faster and harder, and the Soldier’s hand quickens likewise on Clint’s dick. He’s so fucking _full._

When his orgasm comes, it’s a surprise. Sudden heat floods him and Clint’s eyes are rolling in the back of his head and he’s gasping and then he can feel himself spurting over his own chest. Then the Soldier follows behind just a couple seconds later, hips screwing into Clint, his cock so _thick_ as he fills Clint up, and then the Soldier drops his cock and noses over Clint’s neck.

Clint lets out a tired chuckle, stretches his arms out over his head. “You can bite me, you know,” he tells the Soldier. “I can promise you I don’t mind.”

“Sure?” the Soldier asks, but he’s already nosing over Clint’s neck and then down his chest.

“You’ve left enough scars on me,” Clint chuckles, and can’t help the whine as the Soldier slips out of him. “Trust me, I ain’t gonna mind one more.” He smiles to himself. “Actually, kinda like them.”

“Good,” the Soldier bites out, and then he sinks his teeth in, breaking skin, blood bubbling up, right on the spot over Clint’s heart. Clint lets out a choked gasp and arches up into him, hands scrabbling out for purchase on the Soldier’s shoulders. He grinds his teeth in and then pulls back, gives Clint a small, bloody smile, and then curls himself down to lick Clint’s spend from his stomach and chest.

Then the Soldier moves him so that his hips and legs are hanging off the couch, and the Soldier crouches on the floor, slinging Clint’s thighs over his shoulders. He hikes Clint’s hips up with his hands and puts his mouth to work cleaning Clint out. Clint moans at the overstimulation and his hips tremble.

“Too much?” the Soldier asks gruffly, pulling back, breath puffing out over Clint’s swollen, used hole.

“No,” Clint sighs out. “I can take it.”

‘This is nothing,’ he wants to say, but doesn’t. ‘This is nothing compared to what you used to do to me, what the other agents would do to me. You fucking me and then eating me out is nothing compared to being fucked by half a dozen HYDRA agents and then you fucking me after them. This is nothing,’ he wants to say, but doesn’t.

Later, after the Soldier has taken care of Clint to his satisfaction, Clint gets them each a washcloth to wipe themselves down, and then they each dress—the Soldier puts his hoodie on Clint and then wraps a blanket around his own shoulders—and Clint leans up against the Soldier’s chest as Clint turns on the TV. The internet came back on so they can watch some TV, and Clint finds some generic comedy show that’s some noise in the background he can filter out while he curls up with the Soldier.

They’ve gone through half a season when the Soldier says, “My name is James.” He pauses and Clint perks up a bit. “James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Yeah it is,” Clint replies, pressing a kiss to the Soldier’s bare chest.

“James,” the Soldier says, and his voice is soft, soft like Clint’s never heard it. “My name is James.”

“Alright, James,” Clint says. “That’s your name.”

James presses a kiss to the top of Clint’s head and Clint lets out a sigh, pulls out his hearing aids, and lets his eyes slide shut.

He wakes up a bit later in a haze, realizing that the Soldier—James—is carrying him upstairs, and he gently sets Clint on his bed. Clint blindly roots around for the covers and James hands them to him, and then Clint peers up at him, yawning. “You said you wanted to join me,” Clint says, hoping he’s not yelling, and he pats the pillow behind him. Instead of climbing in the other side of the bed, James pushes him over, and then slides in bed. Clint rolls over and James wraps his arms around him, and Clint falls asleep like that, half on top of the deadliest assassin in history.

When he wakes up the next morning, Clint realizes that James pushed him over to that Clint was furthest from the door. He shakes his head. Big softy.

He climbs out of bed and James—it’s gonna be weird, getting used to that—rolls over into the warm spot Clint left. Clint shakes his head and ducks into the bathroom, brushing his teeth and using the toilet. He’s washing his hands and getting ready to shave when the door slams open.

James looks furious, but more than that, he looks scared. His hair is wild around his face and Clint would bet he’s growling. Clint meets his gaze in the mirror and then turns to look at him, eyebrows raised.

James mouths something, but Clint’s lip-reading isn’t so good, so he just points at his ears and then shakes his head. The Soldier always forgot he was deaf; he wouldn’t be surprised if James forgot that too. Well, the Soldier didn’t _technically_ forget, he was erased, but same difference.

James frowns at him and then leaves the bathroom. Clint shrugs and goes back to putting shaving cream on his face. Then, of course, James comes _back_ and holds Clint’s hearing aids out for him. Clint has to rinse his face off, dry it, and then dry his hands before he can reach out and take them and put them in. Once they’re on, he turns and gives James a pointed look.

“I thought you were gone,” James mumbles, glancing from Clint and his reflection and the floor. This is different; the Soldier is confident, sure of himself, and Clint isn’t entirely certain how to deal with this version of him. But it’s his job, and he doesn’t know how to do anything else, so he’s sure he’ll figure it out. “Thought they came and took you.”

“They won’t take me without a fight,” Clint assures him, and he looks at himself in the mirror and decides he can wait another day before shaving. He motions to the sink and the toilet. “Should probably brush your teeth,” he tells James, and they do an awkward dance as Clint leaves the bathroom and James enters it. “I’ll be downstairs, making breakfast.”

James nods and waits until he hears that Clint made it downstairs to close the bathroom door.

Clint frowns as he remembers they don’t have any breakfast food. Well, it’s not like the Soldier—James—knows what breakfast food is, anyway.

He’s heating up rice and beans from the night before when the hardline phone begins to ring. Clint answers it, turns on the speaker, and calls out, “Yeah?”

There’s footsteps on the stairs and James is suddenly in the kitchen, looking just as deadly and furious as the Soldier has always looked.

“You safe?” Natasha’s voice comes through the speaker. “How’s your boy?”

Clint winks at _his boy_ and puts a bowl of rice and beans in the microwave. “We’re good,” he tells her. “You still with Rogers?”

She sighs. “He, uh, I got his file, gave it to Steve. Is he there?”

“Yeah, he’s here. Glaring at me.”

“Glad to hear nothing’s changed.” Clint grins at the smile in her voice. “Hey, take me off speaker.” Clint nods, motions for James to sit at the kitchen table, hits the small switch on his hearing aid so he can use a phone, and then picks it off the wall.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Is his memory coming back?”

“Yeah. He, uh, remembered his name.” The microwave beeps and Clint opens it, picks the hot bowl up with a towel, and takes it over to James. James frowns down at it and Clint rolls his eyes, brings him a spoon, and then motions for the guy to eat. “What was in the file?”

“I couldn’t erase you from it completely. Steve knows about you.”

It feels like all the blood rushes out of Clint’s body and he’s suddenly cold. “How much does he know?”

“Not all of it,” Nat assures him. “But enough to know that you’re close to the Soldier.”

“Does he know how close?”

“I looked through the file before I gave it to him. HYDRA wrote a lot about you, you know.”

“I know,” Clint breathes. “They wrote down everything.”

“Yeah,” Natasha sighs. “You know, we put everything out in the world to bring HYDRA down. That means your files are out there.”

“So are yours,” Clint snipes back, and then he sighs, rubs his face. He glances over his shoulder at James, who is frowning at his bowl and taking small bites. “Is everything out there?”

“Yes,” Natasha tells him. “All of it. Everything they wrote. It’s encrypted, but it’s out there.”

It feels like someone just poured cold water over him, like someone dunked him in a lake and left him to drown. Clint glances at James and then leaves the kitchen, moves around to the hallway behind it. He knows James can still hear him but he likes the semblance of privacy. “What about the videos?”

“That’s in there,” Natasha tells him, and she sounds as broken as Clint feels. “Clint, I’m sorry.”

“You can’t let Rogers see that,” Clint tells her. “You have to make sure no one sees any of it. Natasha, please. You have no idea—what they did to me, what they did to _us._ ”

“I’ll do my best,” Nat promises, and that’s as good as he’s going to get and he knows it. “Clint, I’m sorry. We didn’t have a choice. But I wanted to tell you that Steve’s looking for him, and he’s not going to stop. He’ll never stop.”

“I know,” Clint whispers, biting down on his hand, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t tell him. Not yet. I’ll ask the Sold—James, and when he says it’s okay, you can tell him. But not before then.”

“Alright,” Natasha says, and she sighs. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “I won’t tell Steve. But he’s determined. He’s _Captain America_ , Clint. You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

Clint drops his hand from his mouth, grits his teeth, glares at the wall across from him. “I’ve been a HYDRA agent for over two decades,” he grinds out. “Rogers has no fuckin’ idea who he’s up against.”

“If you have to, can you activate him again?”

“I can,” Clint says. “Doubt it’ll come to that, though. The protection protocols are still well established and only seem to be increasing. Same with his libido. I can see a lot of his original personality shining through and we’ve only just started. Haven’t even been here 24 hours and he already wants me to call him James.”

“Wow,” Natasha says, sounding impressed. “That’s incredible. Make sure you take note of that. I didn’t realize the programming could be overcome so quickly.”

Clint sighs. “I will,” he says, but he’s pretty sure it’s a lie. He’s tired of treating James like he’s a thing and not a person. “I gotta go.”

“Alright,” she says. “Stay in contact.”

“You too.”

He ends the call, takes out his hearing aids and rubs his ears. He’s tired. He doesn’t want to be the only thing keeping the Winter Soldier in line. He’s spent his entire career being the only thing between the Soldier and complete chaos, and sometimes, he’s tired of it. He doesn’t have a choice, he never had a choice, but he’s tired.

He turns his hearing aids off and then on again, puts them back in his ears, and goes back into the kitchen. He hangs the phone on the wall and sighs down at the food he was going to heat up for himself. He’s not really hungry anymore.

“Who was that?” James asks.

“Natasha. You remember her? You helped train her, actually. She was one of the Black Widows. She was trained in the Red Room.”

That gets James’s attention and he stiffens up and his eyes narrow and then he nods. “You were in the Red Room,” he says to Clint, frowning.

Clint nods. “If you went somewhere, I went there too.”

“How long have you been with me?”

Clint thinks about it as he puts his food in the microwave to heat it up. He waits until the microwave beeps at him and he takes his food over to the kitchen table until he replies, “Over twenty years.” He doesn’t want to say any more, so he doesn’t, and he eats to keep himself from talking. He doesn’t tell James how young he was when HYDRA took him, how young he was when the Soldier tore into him for the first time, and how young he was when he was taught, very sternly and firmly and severely, his lot in life. At least they let him keep his bow and arrows. At least they let him keep that.

James’s brow furrows. “They put me in cryo,” he says slowly, frowning as he tries to remember. “I remember the cold. What did you do when I was in cryo?”

“Missions,” Clint replies simply. “I went undercover as a SHIELD agent and did a lot of missions for them too.”

James pauses and Clint watches as his metal hand curls into a fist, the entire arm whirring. “Are you loyal to HYDRA? Is this a trap? Is this a—”

Clint puts his hand out, rests it on James’s metal hand, tries to keep him from punching the table or coming across it and killing him. “No,” he promises. “I’m loyal to you. Just you. I was brought in to HYDRA for you, and I stayed because of you.”

There’s a lot more to it than that—not like Clint was ever given the option to leave, and they brought him back whenever and however he tried—but it’s true. It’s the truest thing he’s ever said, he’s sure of it. He belongs to the Winter Soldier, after all. That’s his lot in life and he knows it and doesn’t strive for anything else.

James’s metal hand slowly uncurls and he searches Clint’s face. “Loyal to only me,” he repeats, and Clint nods fervently.

“I’m yours,” Clint promises, and means it. “That’s all I am. I swear.”

James nods, and looks like he believes him.


	3. oh, there's still a little light that shines

Clint goes to the grocery store the next day. James has to stay behind at the house and Clint can just imagine the path he’s pacing on the porch. It takes Clint a few hours total but he comes back with a full car of food and toiletries and enough lube that normal people could fuck three times a day for the rest of their lives and never run out, so Clint thinks it should last them a month or two. He switched out plates on the car, too, but he’s going to have to get rid of this one and get a new one soon. 

James comes outside and helps him unload the groceries, and once they’re all in the house, he pins Clint against a wall, noses against his neck. Clint moans, sags back against the wall, lets James sniff and bite at him until he’s satisfied. Clint doesn’t know if this kind of behavior is normal for Winter Soldiers—he knows there’s others but he’s never met them, and as far as he knows, none of them need their own Clint’s to be controlled—but he kind of likes it. Makes him feel wanted, and he likes that feeling.

“Gotta put the perishables away,” he moans out as James slowly begins to unbutton his shirt. “Then you can fuck me.”

James growls and then forces himself back. “Put the food away,” he tells Clint, eyes dark, and Clint takes a deep breath and makes himself do it. He’d rather be underneath James but it’d also be nice to have milk, especially milk that isn’t spoiled. He puts all the groceries away in record time and tosses James a tube of lube—it is supposed to taste like plums, which Clint thought was kinda funny—and James pops the cap and sniffs it and his growl goes deep and serious and Clint winks at him.

James grabs him and nearly pulls Clint’s pants apart as he shoves them down. He shoves Clint up against the wall next to the fridge and squirts lube over his fingers, reaching down to press them inside of Clint. Clint knows that he should be using a different type of lube for penetration—flavored lube can dry out quickly—but also knows better than to try and stop him. He’s just happy lube is being used at all, really. A guy can only ask for so much. James shoves three fingers inside of him and Clint winces but doesn’t say anything, just moans at the feeling of being stretched, of having any part of James in him. It’s just a couple seconds later that James is pulling his fingers out and slicking up his cock and spearing Clint with it.

Clint sags back against James as James fucks into him, rough and hard and sure of himself. It reminds Clint of the missions when he was younger, before they started to stretch him out properly, when they’d just squirted lube inside of him and strapped him down and the Soldier had torn into him like an animal. It’s not as bad as that, but the feral, hungry way James is fucking him right now reminds him of it. 

James bites the back of his neck, slides his metal hand up to grab Clint’s hair and pull his head back to arch his back, and his flesh hand moves around to grab Clint’s cock. To his surprise, he’s half hard, and James growls against his skin and Clint’s cock twitches and with James’s help, he’s soon fully hard, panting and whining and twitching his hips.

James comes fast, works Clint over faster, and they both come within seconds of each other, James shoving Clint up against the wall as his hips stutter and his cock pulses inside of him.

“Mine,” James growls and Clint nods, wincing as James pulls out of him, as James releases his hair.

“Yours,” Clint promises, and smiles at James when he brings over a washcloth so Clint can clean himself up. “Thanks.” James leans up, kisses his cheek, and helps Clint pull his pants back on, and then takes the washcloth to the sink to rinse it out. Clint goes back through the kitchen and straightens up the haphazard food in the cupboards. He does his best to hide his winces; hopefully his body will get used to the rough sex again. He’d enjoyed the soft, loving sex, but he knows better than to get used to it. Whoever James was, he was the Winter Soldier for longer than that, and the Soldier fucks hard. He’ll have to start stretching himself in the morning, he decides, or wear plugs at night. And he can keep himself lubricated during the day, with something hardier and longer lasting than flavored lube. He can do this. They’re out from under HYDRA’s grasp. He can do this.

He joins James on the couch in front of the TV, hides the way sitting makes his ass ache, and leans up against James’s side, under his metal arm. James leans their heads together and Clint can hear him sigh contentedly. Yeah, he’ll better himself. James deserves it, after all. Clint has been sacrificing for James for almost all of his life. This is nothing. Clint’s happy to do it.

* * *

Days pass, and then weeks, and then months. No one bothers them. He gets a call from Natasha about once a month, maybe twice a month if there’s any info on Rogers trying to find them or any info leaked on Clint or James, and it’s good to talk to her. James slowly learns about who he was and who he is now. Clint gets him notebooks and he writes down everything he can remember. He has a notebook for memories before HYDRA, a notebook for HYDRA memories and missions, and a notebook for what he remembers about Clint.

He doesn’t ever write down or mention how long Clint has been with him, but he has to know, right? He has to know how young Clint was when HYDRA picked him up. Maybe he doesn’t care? Or maybe it’s all so muddled together and overlapping that James can’t even tell.

One day, James hands over a notebook to Clint, tells him to write down his own memories. Clint procrastinates, hems and haws, pretends he can’t find a pen, and eventually gets around to it. He doesn’t let James read what he writes, mostly because his handwriting is godawful and his spelling isn’t much better. He’s glanced over James’s notebooks and he clearly had a lot more education than Clint, which makes sense. Someone uneducated and dumb like Clint wouldn’t be so good at being such a highly trained assassin, brainwashed or otherwise. People like Clint are basically servants to people like James. But it’s fine. It’s his place. It’s fine.

James gets softer with him over time and Clint doesn’t really know how to deal with it. He can handle it sometimes, but all the time? Clint doesn’t know what to do with that. But he does his best. James learns what lube is best, how to stretch him properly, how to find his prostate, how to fuck him slow and gentle and like he loves him. It makes Clint tear up every time. He doesn’t deserve this, but he takes it.

It’s a few months after they’ve been home when the phone rings. Clint’s head hurts, so he doesn’t check the caller ID before he answers it.

“Yeah?”

“Barton,” comes Steve Rogers’ voice, harsh and mean, and Clint stiffens. Oh fuck. He glances at James, watching TV on the couch, and ducks around the corner.

“Rogers,” he replies. “Fuck you want?”

“Where is he?”

“He’s safe. I swear. But you won’t find him.”

Rogers snorts. “You’re a HYDRA agent,” he says, like Clint didn’t know. “You can’t keep him safe. All you’re going to do is hurt him.”

Clint glares at the wall across from him. He's tired and his head hurts and he's just doing his best and he's just so _tired_ and the words fall out of his mouth before he can stop them. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hisses. “Look, I was happy you took HYDRA down. So was probably half the organization. I was hoping you’d take down Project Insight, and I fucking rejoiced when I saw those Helicarriers go down. But you took away a lot of people’s jobs that day, Rogers, and I get that’s a sacrifice that has to be made. I get that. But you took away a lot of people’s livelihoods. And a lot of those HYDRA agents were just like me—made to join at a young age and we couldn’t leave, no matter what. HYDRA was all we knew. And you stomped on it and you burned it up and you ruined it.” He’s tearing up and he doesn’t know why. 

“HYDRA was Nazis,” Rogers growls, and he doesn’t sound a damn bit sympathetic. Clint wants to punch him so hard that the urge makes his arms ache, but he doesn’t do anything. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“I know that,” Clint snarls. He moves outside just to make sure James can’t hear him, and stares out at the barn and the stolen car—a different one than the first one—hidden away inside. “And neither did I. I fucking still don’t. I’m doing my job, just like you are.”

“What’s your job, then?” Rogers asks mockingly. “Make sure the Soldier doesn’t remember who he was? Make sure he doesn’t remember he was my friend?”

Clint takes in a deep breath to calm himself down. He’s so mad he could puke. He doesn't give a shit about Rogers, doesn't care at all what James thinks or remembers about him, doesn't understand why Rogers thinks he belongs in this discussion at all. “HYDRA picked me up at 15. Did you know that? I ran away from the circus after finding out my brother was embezzling and spent six months on the street, doing whatever I could to make enough money to eat. I first caught their eye as a marksman, and then they decided to use me for something else. Do you know what that was?”

“You controlled him,” Rogers tells him, calm and sure of himself, like it’s a fact and Clint should just agree. 

Clint bares his teeth. “Do you know what your _best friend_ was doing before they gave me to him? He was out of control. No matter how much time he was in cryo, no matter how many times they wiped him, put new words in his head, they couldn’t control him. He finally ended up raping some agent and they realized that’s the only way they could calm him down.” Rogers takes in a deep breath and Clint wants to fucking reach through the phone and gouge his eyes out. “They gave him women of all ages and you know what he did to each of them? Fucking tore them apart. Even killed some of them. He’d go back to being complacent for a day, sometimes more, and then he’d be uncontrollable again.

“They finally landed on the idea of using a man, and the Soldier fucked one of them so hard he had to be hospitalized. So you know what HYDRA decided? They decided to take someone young, someone talented in other areas. Someone hardy. Someone that no one would miss.”

“Barton—” Rogers starts, but Clint’s on a roll, and he talks over him. 

“He fucked me so hard that I should’ve gotten stitches. Instead they fed me with a tube for a month while I healed, and then they gave him to me again. And again. And again.” Clint sneers. “You think I control him, Captain Rogers? I’m the only reason he’s still _alive_. You should be thanking me, asshole, not telling me you’re gonna get me.” He smiles. “You want to know what over 20 years of being the only thing that keeps someone sane does? I have the best bodyguard on the planet right now. You can try, Cap. You can come for me with all the armies in the world. But I’ve spent over 20 years training with the world's best assassins and secret agents and spies and I know shit you’ve never even considered. And guess what? He’ll be right next to me. So try, Rogers. Fucking try it.”

He hangs up before Rogers can say anything else, stops himself from crushing the phone in his hand. They probably traced the call or something and they know right where he is, but Clint doesn’t care. He has other safe houses. He has other places to go, and James will follow him anywhere. 

He waits until he’d calm again before he goes back into the house, smiles at seeing James cooking something on the stove. It’s been nice watching James come back to himself. Clint sets the phone on the receiver and then walks up behind him, wraps his arms around James’s shoulders, sets his chin on top of his head. 

“Smells good,” he rumbles out, and James flicks a smile back at him, ducks his chin to kiss Clint’s arm. “Spaghetti?”

“With meat sauce,” James confirms. “Go set the table. It’s almost done.”

Clint winks at him, kisses the side of James’s head, and goes to do as he’s told. They eat dinner, fuck slow and lazily on the couch, and afterwards curl up together to watch a movie. Clint falls asleep in the middle of it, head buried in James’s chest, strong arms wrapped around him, and he thinks he could live like this forever. 

In the morning, James is gone. 

He packed a bag while Clint was sleeping—Clint had taken out his hearing aids, of course, so he hadn’t been able to hear him moving around—and took the car and drove off. He left a note on the kitchen table, just a torn-out page from one of his notebooks, folded in half. 

_Don’t come after me._  
_-JBB_

Clint calls everyone he can think of, every contact he has, everyone he knew, and everyone—the ones that are left, anyway—promise to tell him if they see hide or hair of James. Clint calls Natasha and she’s busy with her own shit but she promises to put out her own feelers too. 

Clint goes searching for him, goes across the globe to every single safe house he can find, runs himself ragged trying to catch a glimpse of him, and there’s nothing. James is a ghost. He’s fucking _gone_. Not a single one of his contacts has seen anything, none of his leads ever panned out—maybe a sighting of him in New York, or France, or Russia, or here or there or anywhere—and he doesn’t know what to do. James has never left him before. 

Six months later, Clint drops back down to his kitchen table at his first safe house in the middle of God’s Asshole, Iowa, and puts his head in his hands. He tries not to cry but isn’t very successful. The letter is still there and Clint picks it up, carefully, fresh tears welling in his eyes. He’s looked at it hundreds of times at this point. There’s no secret message, no hints, nothing. Just ‘don’t come after me.’ Like Clint is a monster that’d hunt him down if he could. 

He sobs again and buries his head in his arms. Fucking failure. Awful excuse for a human being. He’s spent over 20 years dedicating himself to a man that can just vanish in the night and Clint doesn’t know what to do without him. The Soldier was his entire life. He’d been kept alive for the sole purpose of keeping the Soldier stable enough to complete missions, and he’d _liked_ that purpose. He’d be happy to continue doing it until he died. So he just doesn’t understand why James ran. He just wants to know why. And that’s the answer only James can give, and James isn’t fucking anywhere to be found. 

He wonders if he wasn’t good enough anymore. James had been getting so soft and gentle with him before he left. Maybe he thought, like Rumlow had, that Clint was too old and used up. Stupid, stupid Clint. He should’ve known better than to try and make things more comfortable for himself; James had probably known he was spending so much time stretching himself properly and making sure he was properly lubricated that he’d thought Clint was getting fragile and weak for James to really fuck him like he needed. No wonder he left. 

He just doesn’t know what to do with himself now. All he’d ever been good for was taking care of James. He’d done missions for HYDRA and SHIELD, sure, but those were secondary. 

He thinks he’ll start reading books—James read a lot, so there’s a lot of books around Clint’s house now—but he still has such a hard time with it and the words flip flop and move and the letters get all scrambled and he finally gives up. Stupid, worthless old whore. Surprised James even stuck around as long as he did. Clint finds one of his own notebooks and feels nauseous at his own shitty handwriting and how badly he spells. He puts in the bag with some of James’s things and hides it away in the garage. 

He spends his time cleaning the house, fixing up all his weapons and sharpening every blade he can get his hands on. He makes new arrows, starts making a new bow, figures out he’s gotten better with a gun but he’s still not as good as he could be, and he keeps himself busy. That’s what’s important. If he keeps himself busy, he doesn’t think, and if he doesn’t think, he doesn’t think about James. 

It creeps up on him, though. But he tries not to think about it. 

One day, the lights flash—Clint installed some accessibility features so he doesn’t have to wear his hearing aids all the time—and he grabs his hearing aids and then answers the phone. 

“Clint,” Natasha says. “He’s dead.”

It feels like cold water drenches him and Clint sinks to the floor. He doesn’t even know he’s making a sound—it’s a fucking _wail_ —until he heard Natasha barking out his name. “He’s dead?” Clint sobs out. “Can I see—”

“Not the Soldier,” Natasha tells him, and she sounds sorry for him. Clint hates that sound. “Not James. Rumlow. Rumlow’s dead.”

_Rumlow._

For a moment, all thoughts of James leave Clint’s head and he surges to his feet with a snarl. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely,” Nat laughs. “We brought a fucking building down on him.”

“He survived a Helicarrier,” Clint points out. “But you’re sure?”

“Without a doubt.”

Clint nods, looks around the kitchen like there’s something for him to do. “Where’s the body?”

“Why?”

“I want to piss on him. I want to fucking tear him in two. I told him I was gonna kill him but I could never find him, and I want to make fucking sure he can never hurt me or anyone else ever again.”

“He’s dead,” Natasha promises, and her voice is soft. “Clint. He’s dead. I promise he’ll never hurt you again.” Then there’s some noise on her end and Clint can hear her move the phone away to say something to someone. Then she says, “Clint, I have to go. But I wanted you to be the first to know.”

He sighs in relief. “Hey, Nat?”

He’s known her for more than half his life. He was the one who recruited her, who saved her life, and besides James—who isn’t in his life anymore anyway—she’s his best friend. He’s sure she knows him better than he knows himself. 

“Yeah?”

“Cut his dick off for me, will you?” She snorts at that. “And don’t let them bury the body. Make sure they just dump him in the ocean or something. He doesn’t deserve burial.”

“No problem, Hawkeye,” she says, and Clint can hear the smile in her voice. “I’ll get right on that.”

Right before she hangs up, Clint says, “Spit on him for me, Nat. And thanks for tellin’ me. I’ll sleep better tonight.”

He puts the phone back up and sits on the floor with his back to the fridge and stares unseeingly at the ceiling. If James was still here, Clint would probably throw a party at the news of Rumlow being dead. God, he wants to throw a party. That son of a bitch hurt him and raped him so many times that there’s probably a permanent imprint of his cock on the inside of Clint’s ass. Guys like him deserve to have their death celebrated, not mourned. 

Clint gets to his feet, finds his wallet, gets the keys for the truck he bought a few months ago—it’s old, it barely runs, but it was cheap and the seller didn’t ask any questions—and decides that yes, he is gonna throw a party. He’s gonna buy himself a big cake and a bunch of ice cream and a goddamn expensive bottle of alcohol, and he’s gonna celebrate the bastard’s death. 

Hopefully Rumlow is down in Hell getting fucked by the Devil or whatever. That’s all Clint can hope for. 

He drives into town, buys himself $50 of ice cream, the biggest birthday cake the grocery store has, a bunch of frosting so he can write _The bastard is dead!_ or something of that ilk on it, and then goes next door to the liquor store and buys a $200 bottle of mezcal. He’s gonna celebrate until he pukes it all back up. 

And he does.

He lays up on the roof and drinks from the bottle and eats ice cream from the tub and eats handfuls of birthday cake until he’s bloated and crying and God, Rumlow is _dead_. He’ll never have to see the fucker again. He still wishes he could’ve at least been there, but hey, that’s life. At least he’s dead. 

He just wishes he could’ve shared this with James, but Clint knows better than to wish that anymore. He’s learned his lesson, he thinks. Whatever James got from him, he clearly doesn’t need it anymore. James must be fine on his own and if he ever needs Clint again, well, it’s not like he has anywhere else to go. 

Two days later, Captain America calls. He needs Clint’s help.

Because it’s Captain America, even though Clint kinda hates him, because he’s the only person Clint hasn’t asked yet about James, and because he’s still a little hungover, Clint says yes. 

Two days later, he’s waiting in a parking garage somewhere in Germany, and he’s tired, and he thinks this whole thing is stupid, but then a car pulls in next to him and he looks over and sees Captain America, Falcon, and James get out of the car. 

Clint almost starts crying. But he doesn’t. He’s strong. He’s always been strong. His strength is one of the reasons HYDRA picked him up in the first place. His strength is what keeps him standing when the entire world comes crashing down around him. 

So he gets out of the car, and for the first time, meets Captain America as an equal, as a comrade, and not as an enemy. 

“Nat told me you guys took Rumlow out,” Clint says after he shakes both Rogers’s and Wilson’s hands. James is staying on the other side of the car, well away from Clint, but Clint is trying not to pay attention to him. He’ll break down or whatever later. “Wish I could’ve been there. Fuckin’ hated that guy more than anything.”

“Yeah?” Rogers says. “Natasha told me you asked her to cut off his dick and then piss on him.”

“The least of what that bastard deserved,” Clint tells him, and then bangs his fist on the side of the van. The door opens and Ant-Man climbs out, yawning and looking around, and right behind him is Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. Clint had practically kissed her feet when she’d told him she’d been the one to blow Rumlow up. He grins at watching Scott meet Rogers—didn’t realize Captain America could even act awkward like that—and then glances over to look at James. 

James isn’t looking at him at all. His eyes are completely focused on Wilson, and that’s when Clint realizes the truth. Of course. Sam Wilson is a good man. He’s a close friend of Captain America, and he definitely hadn’t been one of the men keeping James hostage for decades. Clint can’t fault him for it, really. And the guy’s attractive as hell. 

He wants to tell Wilson to take care of James, to make sure they’re safe, about what James likes in bed, but it’s not his place anymore. He lost that because he’s old and used up and no good to anyone anymore. 

He’ll do his best by Captain America. He doesn’t want to think about what’s beyond that. 

Once they’re all suited up and ready to go, Rogers glances at everyone else and then pulls Clint aside. Clint knows what pre-mission talks usually consist of, but he’s trying to be better, so he decides to wait until Rogers tells him to get on his knees before he does it. But all Rogers says is, “The only reason you’re here is because you’re Natasha’s friend, and she vouched for you. She and you might be on opposite sides of this, but she trusts you.” Rogers pushes Clint up against one of the pillars and glares at him. “But I don’t. One step out of line and I take you down. And you better not even talk to Bucky. He left you and you know why. So leave him alone.” Rogers takes a step back, looks Clint up and down, and Clint lifts his chin, glares at him, doesn’t cower away like he wants to. “You’re not a HYDRA agent anymore, Barton. So you better earn it.”

“I will,” Clint grits out, and Rogers nods at him and Clint waits until he’s left to rub his hands over his face. Guess he was wrong about Rogers or anyone else seeing him as an equal. Rogers had called James Bucky, so he must be going by Bucky now. He’ll have to remember that. But why had Rogers said Clint knew why James had left him? Clint still had no idea. 

But he’s trying to be better. Captain America said he could be better. So he picks up his bow and follows the Captain into war.

* * *

James fights as beautifully as he ever did. He’s poetry in motion. Every movement is purposeful and strong and Clint keeps getting distracted watching him. There’s something slightly different about his fighting style and it’s when Natasha picks Clint up and smashes him into the pavement—they’re fighting in an airport and Clint thinks it’s fucking stupid but he’s trying to be better—that Clint realizes what’s different: James cares about not hurting people. The Soldier never cared. 

Clint coughs as his breath returns to him and he slides a knife from his belt and spins around to jab Nat in the stomach. Her uniform has Kevlar or something like that in it, so it doesn’t cut her, but he manages to knock the breath out of her for long enough that Clint can pin her to the ground, push the blade of the knife against her neck. 

Natasha rolls her eyes at him. “Do it,” she challenges. “We both know you’re not going to kill me, Barton. Especially over something like this.”

She’s not wrong, but she’s also on the side that’s against James, and it’s Clint’s entire purpose in life to protect James and keep him safe, so he glares at her and digs the knife in. Her eyes go wide as blood begins to well up, and Natasha flips him around so she’s on top. She pulls out a Widow’s Bite and right before she shocks him with it, red magic picks her up and slams her against the side of a truck. 

Clint jumps to his feet and spins around to see the Scarlet Witch, hands shrouded in red, and she tells him, “Stop pulling your punches,” and then flies off. 

Huh.

Well then.

Clint shrugs, puts his knife back in his belt, picks his bow back up, and runs back into battle. He heads off the Black Panther from going back after James—he's really gotta start calling him Bucky—and snaps his bow into a bow staff when the Panther is faster than any of his arrows. 

“We haven’t met yet,” Clint says. “I’m Clint.”

“I don’t care,” the Panther growls, and lunges for him. He’s strong, but Clint has spent most of his life training against HYDRA agents and super soldiers, so the only thing he’s worried about are those fucking claws. Those could kill him. He’s still human, after all. 

He fights and fights and fights and finally manages to get his dumb fool self knocked to the ground, a few big gashes in his arms and his shirt is torn over his chest, and he lays there for a second before struggling to his feet again. He yanks his broken quiver off his back and pulls out his back-up bow, and then pulls out his last arrow and aims.

Something hits him in the head and the world goes dark.


	4. deep in my tired eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> current comics canon has clint's birthday in 1982, i changed it to a few years earlier for the purposes of this fic. let's go with 1975 or so

He wakes up in a prison, head aching, pounding, feeling like he went two rounds with Rumlow, and he sits up, holding his head in his hands. It takes him a minute to look around and see a small glass of water and a couple pills next to his hearing aids on a tiny desk on the other side of the small cell. 

Clint sighs. He sits for another couple minutes until the pounding in his head calms down, and then gets up. He sniffs at the water and then swallows down the pills when it doesn't seem to smell off. He glares at the hearing aids and then looks out through the plexiglass wall. It’s a group of cells, and when Clint peers out, he sees Falcon and Ant Man, with the Witch nowhere to be seen. The two of them are in cells next to each other and Clint is over by himself on the other side of the room. Hopefully that doesn’t mean anything. 

Wilson notices he’s awake first and he points at his ears. Clint wants to tell him to go fuck himself but also wants to know what the hell is going on, so he puts the hearing aids in. He frowns. 

“Are we underwater?” Clint asks, looking around. 

“Yeah,” Wilson tells him. “We’re in an underwater prison called the Raft. It’s for enhanced individuals who are too dangerous for normal prisons.”

Clint’s frowns deepens. “Huh.” He leans his head against the plexiglass and sighs in relief when he doesn’t see Rogers or James. “Did they get away?”

“Yeah,” Wilson says. “They’re safe.”

“Thank God.” Clint sits down on the bed and tips his head back against the wall. Maybe this is good. Maybe if he’s stuck in prison for the rest of his life then James can know he’s safe from him and Clint won’t bother him ever again. James doesn’t have to keep running if he knows where Clint is and knows Clint can’t come after him. 

He wonders if he should ask Wilson how James is doing, decides against it. He’d rather not know how much James hates him now. If he doesn’t know, he can pretend otherwise. He sighs, tips over on his side, falls asleep.

Later, when he wakes up, it’s to Tony Stark coming into the room between the cells. Clint yawns and sits up, rubs at his ears and puts his hearing aids back in, ambles the few steps over to the plexiglass. Wilson is looking at him strangely, and Clint doesn’t know what to do about it. 

Stark glances over him and pauses in front of Clint’s cell. “I read your file, you know,” Stark tells him, and Clint blanches, stops himself from taking a step back. Stark looks Clint up and down and he wishes he had a blanket or something to cover himself. He’s wearing sweats and a strange t-shirt but he still feels exposed with the way Stark looks at him. “Not only were you in HYDRA, but now you’re stuck in here. Ever gonna make the right decision, Barton?”

Clint lifts his chin, grits his teeth. He wonders if he should tell Stark he was there when the Soldier killed his parents. Instead, he sneers. “Big words from someone who read my file,” he notes nastily. “You’d think you wouldn’t threaten me if you knew what I’d done.”

Stark’s upper lip curls up and he leans in to hiss, “Big words from the Winter Soldier’s slut.”

Clint pales, stumbles back, and turns away. He doesn’t even care that Stark says something else to him, just hunches his shoulders up and ignores him. He hears Stark say something to Ant Man and then to Falcon, and once he leaves, Wilson calls, “Barton? What’d he say to you?”

Clint shakes his head. He should’ve known better. That’s all he’ll ever be, even now that James doesn’t care about him anymore. Instead, he takes his hearing aids out and curls up on the bed and closes his eyes. He doesn’t sleep but he sinks into memories, thinks about when he had someone in his life who cared about him. He’d take all the agents using him, even Rumlow again, the sadistic fuck, he’d take Pierce watching those videos they took and then giving Clint _critique_ the next time they saw each other. He’d take it all back if it meant he had James again. He feels like he’s drowning. 

They get fed twice a day. They have to ask to use the bathroom. Clint keeps his hearing aids in but doesn’t talk to Wilson or Lang. 

When Captain America comes for them, he lets Wilson and Lang out first, and then he comes and stands in front of Clint’s cell. Clint sighs at him. He wouldn’t be surprised if Rogers left him in here. He doesn’t even think he should ask to be let out. He wonders if he can figure out a way to kill himself in here if they’ll let him stay dead or they’ll bring him back like HYDRA did. 

“I should let you rot in here,” Rogers says, and then his brow draws together when Clint doesn't respond. “But I won’t. You deserve it, but you helped us, and I’ll let you out for that.” He hits the panel next to the door and the plexiglass wall begins to descend. “Barton, let me tell you something. You were a HYDRA agent and you’ll never be anything else. But you’re getting better. So thanks.”

Clint nods and walks past Rogers’s outstretched hand, and joins Wilson and Lang before they run through the rest of the prison and get back up into the Quinjet. To Clint’s surprise, James is on the plane, along with the Black Panther.

They’re going to Wakanda, and Rogers asks him where he wants to be dropped off after they leave Ant Man near his house, but then Clint overhears the Panther and James talking about how the Panther’s sister can help get the words out of James’s mind. 

“I can help,” Clint offers up. James’s head swings around and he glares at him. Clint looks away from him, doesn’t try to think about how much pain James has to be in from his arm being blown off like that. “I was, uh, there for a lot of it. And there’s words that you don’t know about.”

James’s mouth curls in a snarl. “Oh?” he asks, surging to his feet. He’s shorter than Clint but he’s always seemed so much bigger than him. “Did you put them in my head, Barton? More _protocols_ to keep me calm so I could kill more people?”

Clint takes a step back, shaking his head. He doesn’t know what to say. He didn’t have any part of that. He knows a lot about it and he just wants to help. Maybe he should’ve written it all down or maybe put it in a computer file and sent it to one of them, not that he really knows how email works or anything. God, he can’t imagine what it must be like for James to know that someone he hates so much knows so much about him, but Clint just wants to help. It’s all he knows how to do.

Wilson steps up between them, holds up a hand to keep James from surging forward. “Bucky,” he says, voice calm. “He’s the only one who can help right now. You don’t have to trust him but we should let him help.”

Clint’s shoulders hunch forward and he ducks his head. He still wants to know what he did, what James must’ve remembered to make it so that he hates Clint so much. But he doesn’t say anything. 

“Fine,” James spits. “He helps, if he even can, and then he leaves.”

Clint nods and leaves the small room of the Quinjet. He sits down in the co-pilot seat and puts his hands in his lap and takes in a few deep breaths. He knows he’s stupid. He knows it. He just never thought he’d hear James think that of him. He just wishes the world would make sense again. 

A hand settles on his shoulder and Clint jerks away from it, not quite able to school the fear off his face when he looks up at Falcon. Wilson. He should start calling people by their real names. “I didn’t touch anything,” Clint assures him, holding up his hands. “I just like being up here.”

Wilson nods at him. “Did you fly planes for HYDRA?” he asks, taking the pilot’s seat and looking over the dash and the dials and taking in all the information. When Clint doesn’t answer, Wilson assures him, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I won’t be mad.”

Clint shifts uncomfortably and then nods, glancing over Wilson to make sure he’s not getting mad and hiding it. “They taught me to fly pretty much anything,” he admits, voice low. “I used to take the Soldier out on his missions.”

Wilson just nods. He doesn’t seem mad, so Clint slowly relaxes. “You’re pretty good with that bow of yours,” Wilson notes.

“I was in the circus when I was a kid. Before HYDRA picked me up. I did a lot of trick shooting back then.”

Wilson gives out a low, impressed whistle. “The circus? How’d you end up there?”

“My brother and I ran away from a foster home and the circus took us in.” Clint tries to smile when Wilson glances over at him. “Then I ran away from the circus and HYDRA found me.”

Wilson frowns at that. “How old were you?”

Clint shifts uncomfortably. He knows he was young. He was just a kid. “I ran away from the circus at 14,” he admits. 

“Hold on, you joined HYDRA at 15?”

He doesn’t know how to say that he didn’t join them, that he wasn’t given a choice, that he didn’t want to, but he didn’t have anywhere else to go. So he just shrugs. 

“How good of a shot were you that they wanted you that young?”

Clint frowns at him. “They didn’t take me because I’m a good shot,” he says slowly, “that was just a bonus.” He doesn’t know what Wilson is getting at, and he doesn’t think he likes it. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go on the Quinjet, though, so he just sits there. 

“What did Stark say to you?” Wilson asks, and his voice is soft and quiet, like he _cares_ , and Clint stiffens, shoots him a glare. 

“I don’t need anyone else making fun of me,” Clint finally mutters. Wilson gives him a strange look. “Why don’t you ask Rogers? He knows.”

Wilson tries to tell him that he didn’t mean it like that, that they need to know, but Clint just ignores him. He feels stupid and dumb and small. He doesn’t understand the world anymore. It used to be hard and it hurt, but Clint at least understood it. This? He doesn’t get this. This is too much.

Suddenly, Clint remembers there isn’t a HYDRA anymore. There’s no one who can make him come back if he doesn’t want to do his job anymore. He doesn’t _have_ a job anymore. James left and took Clint’s life with him, and Clint decides that he’ll help get the words out of James’s head and then he’ll go back to his safe house and take a bunch of pills and maybe he’ll wake up somewhere that makes sense. 

They land in Wakanda a few hours later. Clint found a jump seat and sat in it, staring sightlessly at his hands, while Wilson and the Panther land the Quinjet. Rogers stands near James, who is pointedly looking anywhere other than Clint, and Clint just wishes he knew what he did wrong. But he knows better than to ask. Punishment was always worse if he asked, and he doesn’t think they’ll punish him the way HYDRA did, but he can’t be too careful. He hasn’t stretched himself in months anyway, and they’ll tear him up, he just knows it. So he doesn’t risk it. 

Wakanda is so beautiful that it brings tears to Clint’s eyes. He’s glad James is going to get better in such a beautiful place. Hopefully they’ll be able to help him here. 

The Panther—his name is T’Challa and he’s a _King_ —escorts them immediately to the infirmary. There they meet his sister, Shuri, who is a real literal Princess, and Clint has never met any royalty before, so he doesn’t really know how to act. He just stays quiet, even though he’s not good at being quiet.

T’Challa says something to one of his guards and she points her spear at Clint, herds him to a table on the other side of the infirmary, away from James, and Clint goes willingly. He tries to figure out what he’s supposed to do and just sits on the bed awkwardly when the guard doesn’t tell him to get undressed. He’s only been in an infirmary a few times, when he’d gotten hurt on a mission, or when he’d tried to take himself out, and then a couple other times when they had to fix him up or he'd die, but he usually had to earn his keep, and when it doesn’t look like he’s going to have to do that, he doesn’t really know how to act.

He can hear that they’re scanning James’s body and his mind, and then Wilson says Clint’s name and he perks up. He’s been sitting for awhile, probably an hour, without anything happening, and then Shuri comes over to him. She doesn’t look happy to see him, but Clint smiles slightly at her.

“Sam said you hurt your head,” Shuri says, but it’s not a question, so Clint just nods. “We should scan it. Follow me.”

Clint hops off the bed and the guard glares at him but lets him pass, and Clint follows Shuri across the room to a peculiar machine. HYDRA had a machine like this one, so Clint knows what to do. He starts pulling his pants and shirt off, but Shuri squawks in surprise and Clint freezes.

“You do not have to be naked!” she tells him, highly affronted, and Clint frowns at her, but slowly puts his clothes back on. “Please, Barton, leave your clothes on.”

“Hey,” Wilson says from where he’s standing next to James’s examination table. Rogers and T’Challa are nowhere to be seen; Clint wonders when they left. “You mind doing something for me, Shuri?”

“It depends,” Shuri says slowly, motioning for Clint to lay down on the strange table. He does as asked, stares up at the ceiling. Hopefully this machine won’t hurt like the one HYDRA had.

“Do a full body scan of him for me, would you? I just want to see something.”

Shuri makes a noise that sounds irritated but she doesn’t say no. Then she prods at Clint’s ears. “What is this?”

“Hearing aid,” Clint breathes out, hoping she won’t take it away from him. He likes to be able to hear when they’re coming for him. “I’m deaf.”

She makes a curious sound and then pulls both of his hearing aids out without warning him. Clint jerks away, nearly falls off the table, and then jumps to his feet, giving them all a wary look. He’s not going to let them catch him off guard. He’s not in HYDRA anymore, they can’t make him do anything.

Shuri holds up her hands and mouths something, but Clint has never been good at lip reading. She points back to the strange table and glares at him. Clint wonders what he did to make her so mad, and then the guard points her spear at him. He takes a step back and then another, and then finally his back is against a wall. He grits his teeth and glares at them. He’s not going down without a fight. He looks for a weapon but there isn’t one. He could probably get the spear away from the guard, break off some part of the table maybe, but he’s not going to let them hurt him. Especially not in front of James. James doesn’t deserve to see that.

Wilson steps in the middle of them and holds Clint’s hearing aids out. He looks like he’s trying to calm a wounded, wild animal, and Clint feels like that sometimes. He darts a hand out, snatches them up, and slides them in his ears.

“You’re fine,” Wilson tells him, voice soft. “You can’t wear the aids when the machine is on. She just has a lot of work to do and wanted to get the scan over with. Come on, Barton. It’ll be alright. Look, I’ll be right there, alright? We’ll even ask the guard to step out of the room. I promise no one is going to hurt you.”

He doesn’t know why he trusts Wilson, but Clint nods. “I’m keeping my clothes on,” he tells Shuri, who looks confused and then she nods, and Clint glances down the room at James, who is still staring at the floor.

James did this, so he can do it too. Clint looks at Wilson again, who nods encouragingly, and then Shuri says something to the guard, who moves back over by the infirmary entrance. No one's gonna hurt him. Alright. Clint lays back down and takes his hearing aids out and Wilson comes up next to him, holds out his hand until Clint puts his aids in the man’s hand. Wilson moves out of the way and Shuri comes up to the machine, fiddles with a few of the buttons on the side, and Wilson gives him a reassuring smile.

The bar over the top of the machine begins to move, and Clint squeezes his eyes shut. He really hopes it doesn’t hurt.

Just a few seconds later and someone is tapping him on the shoulder. Maybe he did something wrong? He peeks his eyes open and Wilson is holding out his aids. Clint slides them in and looks up at him. “Is that it?”

“Yes,” Shuri calls back from where she’s disappeared to on the other side of the infirmary. “Very fast! The last machine took longer. Nearly ten seconds! But this one is very fast.”

“It didn’t even hurt,” Clint remarks in amazement as he sits up, looking down at his arms. Then there’s a small flash of light out of the corner of his eye and he looks up to see a projection of his body up on the wall. It’s next to another one that, going by the missing arm, is James’s. Clint gets up and looks at himself in amazement.

“Did HYDRA have a machine like that?” Wilson asks.

Clint nods, brushing his fingers over the projection in astonishment. “It hurt so much they used to have to strap me down,” he remarks. “But this is amazing. They never used to get that level of detail.”

Shuri comes back around and stops and stares at Clint’s projection, raising one hand to her mouth. She doesn’t say anything. Wilson is staring at it as well, and he looks troubled. Beyond troubled, actually.

From down the room, James gets up and walks over, frowning as he does. Clint scurries to get out of his way, and he watches, curiously, as James looks at the projection of Clint’s body and blanches.

“That’s actually a lot better than it was,” Clint offers up, motioning at the projection of his body. He can clearly see what they’re all so upset over—the scars show up as bright white against the gold of the projection—but it used to be a lot worse. Wilson and Shuri both turn to look at him and Clint walks around the table, making sure to keep away from James. He motions to the anal scarring. “They fixed that about a decade ago,” Clint tells them. “They had some laser they were able to use to erase it, and they tried to uh, put something in there, but it didn’t take.”

“What did they do, Clint?” Wilson asks, voice hollow.

Clint blushes, ducks his chin. He glances at James and then looks down at the floor. “They wanted me to slick up like a girl,” he whispers. “It didn’t work.”

“How did they attempt that?” Shuri asks.

Clint shrugs one shoulder. “All I know is that it hurt a lot. They actually had to—” He clamps his mouth shut and shakes his head.

“Hey,” Wilson says softly. “Just tell me.”

Clint glances up at him and then rubs the back of his neck. “They had to wake the Soldier up to make him hold me down.” He doesn’t want to know how disgusted James must look. He’d been so weak and the Soldier had been the only thing that made him stay down and stop fighting.

“This type of scarring takes...this is _years_ of repeated abuse,” Shuri says. “You said all of this happened in the last decade?”

Clint nods, looks up at the projection of himself again, moves forward to brush his fingers over the white healed breaks in his arms and the dozens of healed bite marks over his back. “It was worse before they fixed it,” he tells them. “A lot worse. They decided to heal me up because I started tearing open whenever they, uh, made use of me.” He ducks his chin, embarrassed. Hopefully James doesn’t remember any of that.

“We can fix this,” Shuri finally says, and Clint sees that she’s pointing to the scarring inside and then the bite marks along his shoulders and back. Unbidden, his gaze turns to James, because it’s not him that cares, it’s not like his body is his own, but James is no help. He just looks vaguely sick. Clint wonders if he’s grossed out by knowing that he fucked someone that so many other people had used, or if it’s because he now has proof for how old and worn out Clint is. Maybe he’s disgusted because now he has proof that Clint is a whore. For the first time since he left the circus, Clint is on his own.

So he nods. Maybe it’d be nice to move on and have a body that’s all his own. “I’d like that,” he says quietly, and strangely enough, James makes a strange sound and turns and walks back down to the bed he’d been on. Clint glances at Wilson, who just looks sad.

Wilson meets his gaze. “Do you have the names of who did this to you?” Wilson asks him, motioning to the anal scarring and then the bite marks.

Clint shrugs. “The Soldier likes to bite,” he tells him, trying to keep his voice down so James doesn’t hear. He motions at the line of scars down his spine.

“He did all that?” Wilson asks, something strange in his voice. “That’s years worth of scarring, Clint.”

Clint nods. “Yeah, over 20 years worth.”

Wilson stiffens. “Hold on,” he says, voice sharp, and he reaches out and grabs Clint’s shoulder. Clint jerks and Wilson drops his hand. “When you said HYDRA didn’t take you for your marksmanship skills, you meant they gave you to...him? The Soldier?”

Clint gives him a strange look. “Yeah,” he replies slowly, brow furrowed. “That’s why they took me. Didn’t Rogers tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

Clint glances down the infirmary to look at James, who is sitting on one of the examination tables, staring down at the floor. He looks strange without his metal arm. Clint just shakes his head. He shouldn’t say any of this around James. Wilson follows his gaze and then motions for Clint to follow him. Clint looks at Shuri, who’s messing with another one of the machines, a smaller projection of Clint’s body and scars up in front of her, and then makes his feet move, feeling like he’s trying to push through molasses. He doesn’t want Wilson to hurt him.

Wilson leads him out into the hall and then finds an empty room. There’s a table and chairs in it, and Wilson leans against the end of the table, crossing his arms and shaking his head.

“Alright, Clint,” he says. “I need you to tell me everything.”


	5. and when i sleep

Clint leans back against the wall, crosses his own arms, hunches his shoulders. “Why?” he asks warily. “James already left me. There’s no reason for you to want to know anything.”

Wilson sighs, pulls out a chair, and sits down. He motions Clint to the chair at the head of the table and cautiously, Clint takes the seat. He’s taller than Wilson, probably stronger too, but Wilson has Wakanda behind him, and Clint doesn’t have anyone on his side, so it wouldn’t be too smart to fight him. But he could probably disable the guy for long enough that he could get away. He’s done it before, with guys who scare him a lot more than Wilson does.

“Going by what I saw in there, Clint, what HYDRA did to you is inhumane. It’s torture. We thought you joined HYDRA at such a young age because you agreed with them.”

“I didn’t even know what HYDRA was,” Clint tells him. “I didn’t even finish middle school.”

Wilson sighs. “Clint. Please tell me what happened.”

“Why?” Clint presses. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“Before I got together with Cap”—Clint frowns at that phrasing—“I worked with war vets. People who’d been prisoners of war, seen their friends killed in front of them, things like that. Talking about it doesn’t change anything, but it helps.”

“Why?” Clint asks again, glaring at him. “Why _you?_ So, what, you can go back to James and talk about how used up I am?” He realizes what he said and claps a hand over his mouth, flush rising on his cheeks.

“Bucky doesn’t think that, I promise,” Wilson assures him. Clint shakes his head. “Clint. I don’t know what they told you when HYDRA had you, but Bucky doesn’t think that about you.”

“Why did he leave then?” Clint snarls out, trying to keep tears from filling his eyes. “I spent over 20 years taking care of him and he just leaves me? You saw what they did to me, what _he_ did to me, and I still...you want to know why HYDRA took me? They took me because the Soldier was out of control. Do you know what he did to people? He tore a bunch of women apart with his bare hands. They told me he did that and waited until I begged to be let go and then they threw me in a room with him. They told me later that the only reason he didn’t kill me too was because he liked the way I _smelled._ ” Clint glares at him and yanks up the back of his shirt and twists around, points at the middle of his back. “You see that one? That’s the first one. He liked to wait until it healed and then he’d bite it again.” He pulls his shirt back down and turns back around to glare at Wilson, who looks...haunted. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“You were a kid,” Wilson breathes out. “That’s why you said they took you, not that you joined them. Clint, God, I’m so sorry.”

“Of course they took me,” Clint replies, confused. “Why would I go with them? I didn’t want any part of that.”

“Why were you so happy when Rumlow died?”

Clint shoves to his feet. “That’s none of your fucking business,” he bites out, and spins on his heel to leave, but freezes at seeing Rogers in the doorway. He should’ve fucking known.

“What did he do to you?” Wilson asks, voice soft. “Clint, please. Just tell me. We can’t help you until you tell me.”

“I never asked for help,” Clint tells him, tone short, glaring at Rogers. “No one helped me back then, no matter how much I begged, no matter how much I screamed, no matter how much I tried to get away. And then I spent the rest of my life taking care of the Soldier and he fucking leaves in the end anyway. Then you come in here and act like I’m to blame for _anything_ that happened, like just because I know the Soldier has more words that none of you know about is somehow _my fault._ ” Clint points at Rogers. “The only reason you even _got_ your best friend back, Rogers, is because of me. I was his last chance. Otherwise they were gonna kill him and hope that one of the other Winter Soldiers was as good as him. You have no idea what he did to me, what any of them did to me. I never controlled a single thing he did, ever. He controlled _me._ I _told_ you all of this and you never listened, did you?” Clint looks back at Wilson, who slowly stands up. “Some of those scars are from other HYDRA agents, sure, but most of them are from the Soldier. And I still went back to him, every single time, without complaint.”

“And then you helped him get free,” Wilson finishes for him, and Clint lifts his chin. “Clint, that’s why he had to leave.” Clint stiffens. “I promise he doesn’t think you’re worthless or used up or anything like that. He just had to find himself without you.”

“Why not tell me?” Clint asks, whirling around on Wilson. “I spent over twenty years taking care of him. It’s my job. So why leave?”

“I told him to,” Rogers speaks up from the doorway and Clint turns back to look at him. “I talked to you and then later that night, he called me back. I told him I read your file and read that you were the basis of a lot of control protocols in the programming that turned him into the Winter Soldier. I told him you were a HYDRA agent, and once a Nazi, always a Nazi. I told him you were just biding your time until you were going to activate him and make him kill again.”

Clint staggers back, catches the edge of the table in his hand, takes in a deep breath. “If you read my file, you asshole, you’d know they only tied some of his protocols to me because I was the only one he’d listen to. I even know how to change some of those protocols, but no one ever asked me, did they? You want to call me a Nazi, fine, but I was only part of HYDRA because they picked me up off the street when I was a kid and gave me to a fucking _monster_ , and every time I tried to run or tried to kill myself, they brought me back and raped me so many times it created just _some_ of that scarring in that hologram you saw. So if you don’t blame James for what he did, you can’t blame me either. I was no more willing in anything than he was. We were both just trying to survive. At least they put him in cryo when they were done with him.”

Rogers looks shocked. “You went on dozens of missions for them. Hundreds.” Clint wants to fucking gouge his eyes out. Does the man ever listen to anything anyone says to him? Is he capable of hearing anything that doesn't go along with what he already thinks is true?

Clint bares his teeth. “So did Natasha and you never blamed her for it, did you? What, because she’s a woman? Did she play up not knowing that SHIELD was HYDRA? And you believed her?” Clint shakes his head. “I’m the one who recruited her, asshole. SHIELD sent me to kill her, HYDRA sent me to bring her back alive. So I did. Your buddy Natasha? She deleted her HYDRA files before she released everything just so you wouldn’t find out. Didn’t you think it was interesting that she never went on _one_ HYDRA mission? Every single SHIELD agent did. All of them. That’s how infiltration works. But her files say she never went on one.”

Rogers sags against the doorframe. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

“Why the fuck would I lie? You’re nobody to me, Rogers. I don’t have anything to prove to you.”

Rogers frowns and Wilson moves around Clint to stand near Rogers. Clint frowns at the way they look at each other, the significant looks they exchange. Then Wilson says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

But Rogers talks over him to tell Clint, “T’Challa is willing to let you stay until Shuri heals your scars and we get the words out of Buck’s head, but you leave after that. You leave Bucky alone, you leave us alone, and you do whatever you want as long as you’re not bothering us. Understand?”

He doesn’t, but he nods anyway. Rogers calls for a guard and they take him down a few levels to a room that is very clearly a cell, but Clint doesn’t fight. Hopefully James gets a better room is all he thinks as they lock the door behind him. It’s small, with just a bed and a toilet behind a partition and a sink and a small desk with a bolted down chair. There’s a change of clothes folded up on the bed and Clint sits down next to them, puts his head in his hands.

He’d even told Wilson what he wanted to know and he’s still treated like he’s done something wrong. He knows he doesn’t deserve any better but he still...he still wants. It’s stupid of him but he wants. He was James back, he wants life to make sense again, but he doesn’t think it ever will.

Clint pulls out his hearing aids and rolls over on the small bed and goes to sleep.

* * *

The guards escort him back up to the infirmary the next day. He’s hungry but he doesn’t know how to get breakfast, and he’s not sure any of them speak English and he’s too afraid of getting speared to ask, so he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he has to earn it? But they haven’t given him anything to do, and he doesn’t know how to service women. He could learn, but he’s also just hungry. The food in the Raft hadn’t been very good, and he hadn’t been fed very much, so he’s even hungrier than normal. But he doesn’t say anything. He filled up on water in the cell so he should be good for at least another day or two. Maybe they’re not letting him eat because they want to keep him clean. HYDRA used to do that, but at least they’d put an intranasal tube in him. Didn’t want him to die, after all. Too useful.

Shuri and James are there, and Wilson and Rogers are too. Shuri smiles at him when he comes into the room and points him to the bed across from James. Clint obediently takes his seat, clasps his hands in between his knees. 

“Alright,” Shuri begins, picking up a tablet and a pen, and she does something with her hand and information shoots up around them. “My understanding is that the brainwashing worked primarily on pushing down one part of you and raising up another.”

James nods but Clint winces, raises a hand like he’s in class. Shuri raises an eyebrow at him. “Not really,” he says, voice soft. “They erased his mind first. Used something called the Chair. It was used after cryo to stabilize him so the Soldier would be more stable.”

Shuri points her pen at James. “You didn’t tell me any of this,” she says accusingly, and then turns completely to Clint.

“I didn’t know,” James says quietly, and Clint keeps his attention on Shuri as James looks at him.

“Tell me everything,” Shuri tells Clint and he nods. Maybe this’ll get him some food.

He starts to talk. He talks about everything he knows, about the regular injections the Soldier had to get that made the brainwashing more effective, about the specific tones they used to play that made him more susceptible to manipulation, about how the Soldier’s cryogenic chamber was colder than average, what the Chair did, how it worked—or how Clint thought it worked—and, with Wilson’s gentle encouragement, tells them about the protection protocols. He tells them about the secondary activation words that only Clint and Natasha knew about. He tells them about the words, how each of them builds on the one before to bring out the Soldier, how they erased him completely and built him back up. They didn’t just bury James, they destroyed him. It’s a goddamn miracle that he pulled anything of himself back, let alone an entire personality and any of his history. 

He talks for so long that lunch is brought in. A plate is brought in for everyone other than Clint.

Oh.

Maybe he needs to go talk to T’Challa. He can...he can be good. He deserves to eat, he thinks. He’s done good with helping them and helping James get better.

Wilson eats half of his foot and then offers it to Clint, who tries to deny it, but Wilson insists, so Clint takes it gratefully. It’s strange food, but it’s good, and it makes the ache in his stomach ease a bit. He smiles at Wilson and then waits until Shuri tells him to continue and he does.

He tells them about the Chair, how they used to threaten the Soldier with putting Clint in it, with using it on him, and a few times they even strapped Clint down and put the machine to his head and didn’t turn it on, but it’d made the Soldier so mad that he’d killed two agents and hospitalized another. He tells them the Chair essentially damaged his memory to the point that they’d been able to overwrite parts of his mind and replace them with Winter Soldier programming. He tells them about how dangerous the Soldier had gotten, about how they’d sincerely considered putting him down, and Clint had been the only one who’d helped him regain control. The memories make him shudder but he keeps talking. He remembers being a scared little kid and being in so much pain that his mind didn’t even work and curling up in a corner and just sobbing. 

He glances at James and he’s not looking at him, so Clint continues to talk. He talks about missions, about how the first mission he’d gone on with the Soldier that he’d tried to run and the Soldier had found him, grabbed him by the neck, and dragged him along. He’d been next to the Soldier as he killed Tony Stark’s parents, and then the Soldier had fucked him up against the car. He’s pretty sure that wasn’t on any video tapes or anything, but Clint remembers that so clearly he can still taste the blood in the air. 

“What are protection protocols?” Shuri asks. She’s been writing everything down and Clint wonders about how small her handwriting is, how good she can spell. 

Clint swallows. “Things I could do or say that would make the Soldier protect me from any danger. They installed them because if anything happened to me, they wouldn’t have control over him anymore, so they made it one of his prime directives to keep me safe.”

“What is one of these words?” she asks.

Clint looks up and looks at James, who slowly raises his head from staring at the floor. For the first time in a very long time, the two of them make eye contact. Clint tries to tell him with his face how much he misses him, how much he wants James back, but then James looks away. “I probably shouldn’t say any of them with him right here,” Clint says after thinking about it, looking back at Shuri. “He, uh, reacts unpredictably if he hasn’t been put under. The cryo and the Chair makes him react a lot more predictably.”

He can _feel_ James’s glare, but Clint is just saying what he knows. He’s just trying to help.

“Can you give me an example?” Wilson asks.

Clint shifts uncomfortably. “Um, he’s programmed to check me over after every mission. Actually, he started doing that on his own, and they reinforced it.”

“When did he start?” Wilson questions, glancing from Clint to James. 

“A couple years in,” Clint answers after thinking about it. “I got hurt, broke my arm. He didn’t notice right away because he had to finish his mission, and then he grabbed me to take me back to the airplane, and I, um, kinda yelled. So he looked me over and found out about my arm and splinted it.”

“How old were you?”

“18 I think? It was only a few years in.”

James makes a sound like he’s going to puke and Clint is up and reaching for him before he can really think about it, but Wilson moves in between them. Clint freezes and then moves back to sit back down, watching carefully as Wilson slides an arm over James’s shoulders and James tips forward, presses his face to Wilson’s chest. “He was a _kid,_ ” James says, and he sounds like he’s crying, which Clint doesn’t understand at all. “God, Sam, he was a kid.”

“I know,” Wilson says quietly. 

Rogers grabs Clint’s arm and drags him out of the infirmary. Clint tries to dig his heels in and stay back, but Rogers is impossibly strong. Rogers drags him out into the hall and slams Clint up against a wall, gets right up in his face. “How much of that is true?” Rogers snarls.

“All of it,” Clint snarls back, glaring at him. “I told you, I don’t have a reason to lie. I’m just trying to help. If you don’t like that, it’s your problem.”

Rogers shoves back from him and paces in short, rapid strides in front of him. “You’re not telling us something,” he finally says. “You’re hiding something and I know it. If you don’t want to say it in front of Bucky, fine. But you tell me, here and now, Barton.”

Clint lifts his chin. “I don’t have to tell you anything,” he spits. “You’re hot shit everywhere else, Rogers, but to me? You’re nothing more than a guy in a fancy suit with a fancy shield, that, I’ve noticed, you don’t even have anymore. I came and helped you because you asked, which, by the way, I noticed that you didn’t have any problems asking a HYDRA agent for help when you needed another man to piss off Tony Stark. But God forbid you need a HYDRA agent’s help to fix your friend, right? Even though _he_ was a HYDRA agent too, right? But that’s different because they made him, because he didn’t have a choice. Like I ever had a choice either. You need to stop being so fucking self righteous and actually accept that maybe you don’t know what’s right, Rogers.” Rogers lifts a fist and Clint grits his teeth. “Go for it. I’ve had more teeth put back in than you can even imagine. Your boy in there broke my jaw three times. You don’t fucking scare me at all, Rogers.”

“Steve?” comes James’s voice from the doorway.

They both turn to look at him.

James is frowning at them. Clint turns his head away and Rogers steps back from him, hand still twisted in Clint’s shirt. “Leave him alone,” James says slowly. He motions back at the infirmary with his chin and Clint automatically goes, elbowing Rogers off him. As he moves past James he hears James tell Rogers, “You need to lay off him. I don’t know why you’re so pissed at him, but get over it.”

Huh.

“What are the activation words?” Shuri asks him. She now has something that looks like a computer, but it’s floating in front of her and Clint can see through it. Modern technology is so cool.

“Which ones?” Clint asks, retaking his seat on one of the beds.

“The main ones. The ten.”

“If I say them, it’ll activate him,” Clint tells her.

Shuri considers that and then brings her floating computer over and puts it in front of Clint. “Write them down,” she tells him. Clint winces and nods. HYDRA taught him some typing, and it can’t be too hard to spell any of them, right?

_Longing_

_Rutsd_

_Furnase_

_Day brake_

_17_

_Be nine_

_Nine_

_Home comming_

_One_

_Fr 8 car_

It’s the best he can do. Clint pushes the floating computer back over to Shuri and doesn’t look at her reaction as she reads it. Wilson moves over and reads it as well.

“Be nine?” Shuri asks. “Why is nine in there twice?”

“Yeah, like...something that’s not important. Like a tumor that isn’t cancer or something.”

Her eyes light up. “Oh! Benign!”

Clint nods. “I just, uh, didn’t know how to spell it. Oh, and also, you have to say them in Russian. But I definitely don’t know how to spell that either.”

“What would happen if I said them in English?” Shuri questions. Clint shrugs.

“I doubt anything good,” he replies. “But they taught me the words in English just in case, so it might be another trigger sequence as a backup.”

She nods, types a few things, but Clint can’t read backwards, so he doesn’t know. He looks up as Rogers and James come back in. “You said there was another sequence,” Shuri tells Clint, who nods. “Will you write those down as well?”

Clint sighs and nods, and she floats the computer back over to him. “This one is buried a lot deeper,” Clint tells her. “With how well he’s recovered, I don’t think it’ll be too hard to get the first set of words out, but these? These were in case of emergency only. I think I only used them once.”

There’s just three words.

_King_

_Is_

_Dead_

“What does that mean?” Wilson asks after Clint finishes painstakingly typing them out. “The King is—” Clint leaps forward, slaps his hand over Wilson’s mouth.

“Don’t,” he hisses. “Trust me. Don’t. You have—you only know him like this. _Don’t._ ” When Wilson nods, Clint drops his hand and then moves back to the bed. He glances at James, who looks horrified, and then Clint explains, “It’s kind of like a last resort kind of thing. I’m supposed to activate it if HYDRA ever went down.”

“What would he do if you used this specific string of words? It is not as uncommon as the previous trigger words.”

Clint nods in agreement. “I think you have to remember he was never around regular people, y’know? I was kinda the only one who ever talked to him outside of someone giving him orders or brainwashing him. So he never would’ve heard that phrase. But I said it once when I was trying to use him to escape.” He winces, ducks his head. “It kinda creates a self destruct sequence. He kills everyone around him. Then he takes down whatever building he’s in and gets me out, takes me to a safehouse. It’s really a last resort kind of thing.”

“When you used it,” Rogers pipes up, “why didn’t you escape?”

Clint rubs the back of his neck. “He was punching through a wall and part of the ceiling came down on me. The protection protocols overrode the command and he stopped to make sure I was okay, and then that’s when they captured us.”

Something in Rogers’s face changes then, and Clint isn’t quite sure what it is. But he looks between James and Clint and nods slightly, but doesn’t say anything. Clint wonders what he’s thinking but it’s not his place to ask.

“Okay!” Shuri says. “We will do our first trial run tomorrow. Now leave me alone so I can research this.”

A guard comes to escort Clint back to his cell but Rogers stops her. “He’s going to come back to our room for dinner and then he’ll go back,” he tells her, and the guard nods and then follows them down a couple flights of stairs to the rooms Rogers and James and Wilson are all apparently sharing.

There’s two bedrooms, and Clint doesn’t let himself think about which one James is sleeping in—the one with a bed that clearly two people have slept in, or the one that’s only mussed on one side—and two bathrooms, and Clint ducks in one of them and stares in awe at the shower. If he had time, he’d be able to spend a week in there. It’s _huge._

He uses the toilet, washes his hands, glances at his reflection and winces at how tired he looks, and then joins them in the small dining area where there’s food already set out. The guard from before is standing guard near the door, spear in hand, so Clint couldn’t run even if he wanted to.

Rogers and Wilson are sitting on one side of the table, and James is sitting directly across from Rogers, and there’s a plate of food on James’s free side. Clint pauses, not entirely sure what to do, and when James doesn’t look at him, he picks up his bowl of food and moves it to the head of the table, closest to Wilson. They all eat in silence for a few minutes and Clint clears half his plate before he says, “I’m sorry you had to hear all of that. It must’ve been rough.”

He’s talking to James, because of course he is, but Rogers lets out a sigh and nods, takes a drink of water. “That’s not even all of it, is it?”

Clint shrugs one shoulder. “Maybe a quarter?” he guesses, rounding up pretty significantly. “I mean, a quarter tops.” He glances at James and sighs. He used to know everything the Soldier was thinking, but he doesn’t know James as well, especially after being separated from him for so long. He just can’t read him as well. 

He wonders how much James remembers. Clint remembers all of it, every single awful second. He looks back down at his plate. He wonders when he’s going to have to tell him about what the other HYDRA agents did to him, if they’ll ever ask. 

“How many people did I kill?” James grinds out, and Clint swings his head up, but James is looking down at his plate. 

“About two dozen assassinations, if I remember right, and then you, uh, probably doubled that with HYDRA agents. I think half the reason HYDRA went through scientists so fast was because they were all scared shitless of you.”

James takes in a deep breath. “How many of them did I kill because they touched you?”

That’s a harder question to answer. “Dozen, maybe?” he finally decides on. “Most of them were uh, well.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You didn’t like anyone touching me.”

James’s hand curls into a fist, knuckles turning white, and he lets out a short, sharp breath, and then shoves to his feet, chair clattering to the floor, and he rushes into the bathroom, door slamming behind him. Clint glances at Wilson, who just shakes his head tiredly. 

“He’s working on it,” Wilson tells him. Clint doesn’t know what that means, but he nods. 

“I’m tired,” Clint says, standing up as well. The guard detaches herself from the wall and Clint walks over to her. “Thanks for dinner. I appreciate it.”

“Wait,” Rogers calls. “I’ll take him.”

Clint blanches but doesn’t put up an argument. The guard glances between them and then nods, opens the door for them and then walks down the hall, disappearing around the corner. 

“I’ll be right back,” Rogers says to Wilson, and then he escorts Clint down the hall to the stairs. They go down a few flights and then down another hall to the cell. They pause outside of it and Clint looks at him. “Barton,” Rogers says slowly, “I’m not one for apologies. It’s not in my nature. But I’m sorry anyway. I judged you and I shouldn’t have. You were right in saying that if I can’t judge Buck for what he did, then I can’t judge someone who was kidnapped as a kid and made to do horrible things.”

With that, Rogers opens the cell door and pushes him in. Clint slowly turns to look back at him as Rogers locks him in. Strange how Rogers says he was wrong but still locks him up at night. Just in case, he guesses. 

Clint takes out his hearing aids, rinses himself off in the sink, puts on the new clothes that were left for him, and climbs into bed. 

He dreams about the Soldier. He dreams about James. He dreams about a strong arm holding him close and never letting him go. He dreams that James doesn’t hate him and that James cares for him the same way Clint cares about him. 

When he wakes up, his pillow is wet with tears. 

He rolls over in bed, cards his hands through his hair, and then rests his elbows on his thighs and presses his face to his palms. He wants to cry. He doesn’t want to be dirty and useless anymore. He knows that no matter how much he tells them that it’s not going to change the fact that James doesn’t want him anymore. It doesn’t change the fact that with every word he says, it just solidifies the fact that he’s old and used up and no good for anything. 

God, he’s tired. Hopefully this will all be over soon and he can go rest.

He’d spent so much time wanting to get out from under HYDRA and now he is, he doesn’t know what to do. All he’d wanted for so long was to be free and freedom doesn’t make sense. _Nothing_ makes sense anymore. 

He should’ve done more, he thinks, to keep James at the safehouse. He’d tried, but clearly not hard enough. He just doesn’t understand; he’d done everything, done it all right, and James had still left. 

There’s movement to his right and Clint looks up to see the cell door open. He moves across the room to get his hearing aids and slides them in, and then the guard escorts him out. To his surprise, Wilson is waiting for him, and he looks faintly annoyed. Clint stops in his tracks and the guard prods him forward, but Clint doesn’t move. He knows that look. That’s the look Rumlow used to give him when a mission went bad and he needed someone to take the anger and frustration out on. That’s the look Pierce used to give him when he’d done something wrong but Pierce was waiting for the Soldier to be put in cryo until he punished him for it.

Clint knows that look.

Wilson shakes his head at him. “I got him,” he tells the guard, and then escorts Clint back upstairs to the infirmary. He doesn’t say anything and Clint wonders if he’ll have time to prepare himself or if Wilson likes it to hurt. Wilson opens the infirmary door for him and Clint cautiously goes in, making sure he never has his back to the man. He goes to sit across from James but Rogers stops him.

Clint glances at him. It’s strange to have someone touch him in front of James without James stopping them, and he looks at James and wonders why his jaw is clenched. Slowly, Clint pulls his arm out of Rogers’s grasp and Rogers says, “Don’t sit. We’re going downstairs.”

Clint doesn’t know what downstairs means, but he shakes his head. He’s not going fucking anywhere with Rogers.

“It’s alright,” James suddenly says and Clint pauses. “Clint. It’s alright.”

He doesn’t want it to be alright. He doesn’t want it to happen at all. But James said it was alright, so Clint nods. Shuri comes in, tells them all to follow her, and everyone gets up and does. She tells them about the scans she’d done that morning—apparently Clint was the last one up—and how she’s going to scan James’s brain while Clint uses the activation words and then she’ll know how to remove them. Clint just nods.

He misses the Soldier. Hopefully they’ll be able to get the trigger words out of James’s head without the Soldier coming out, but God, Clint misses him so much. The Soldier was his only constant in a life full of chaos and Clint doesn’t want to live without him anymore. But he doesn’t have a choice otherwise, so he just nods and follows them.

The original plan is for James to be in restraints on one side of the room and for Clint, Rogers, and Wilson to be on the other, while Shuri is outside in an observation room. But Clint shakes his head, tells them he won’t do it. If the Soldier does get activated, he’ll kill anyone in the room with them to keep Clint safe. He’ll be especially unstable with how long he’s been out of cryo and how long it’s been since he’d been in the Chair. 

So it’s just him and James in a room, alone, for the first time in seven months. Clint doesn’t know what to do, so he doesn’t nothing. James isn’t restrained—he’d been pretty clear about not letting anyone hold him down—and he has a few electrode-thingys strapped to his head.

He’s staring directly at Clint. He has no expression on his face, but he’s looking at Clint like he’s drowning and Clint is the only thing that can save him. It’s strange; Clint doesn’t know how to feel.

“Say the first word,” Shuri’s voice crackles through the intercom. For all their technologies, even Wakanda can’t get the static out of intercoms.

“ _Longing,_ ” Clint says, in Russian, and watches sadly as James’s face tightens. He might miss the Soldier as much as he misses an arm if it was missing, but that doesn’t mean he wants the Soldier more than he wants James. He just wants _anything_ , any fucking crumb of affection, and it seems that it’s completely lost from him.

There’s a sound from the intercom and then Shuri says, “Very interesting! Next one!”

“ _Rusted._ ”

James’s face tightens even further and Clint’s shoulders fall. Shuri tells him to say a few more and then they stop, go back upstairs to the infirmary, and break for lunch while Shuri works. There’s plates for all of them, but Clint notices that there’s less food on the plate given to him, which, for some reason, irritates Wilson. But they all eat, and none of them seem like they want to talk. James barely eats and when he notices Clint already finished his food, hands his plate over to Clint. Clint gives him a strange look but clears his plate too. He’ll be fine with not getting breakfast if it means James will be this nice to him, whether or not he deserves it.

Shuri tells them they’ll try to remove the trigger words in the morning.

Clint decides to take a walk. He has to be escorted by a guard, but he has a lot more freedom outside of the palace. It’s crazy to him that someone like him is in a _palace_ of all things, but he just rolls with it. If they really do get the words out of James’s head tomorrow, then he’ll be gone by sundown. He wonders how they’re going to do it, if they’ll take him somewhere, or if they’ll just drop him in the forest all around Wakanda and let him die out there. He wonders if James will want them to kill him, if Clint knows too much, if James wants to start over without HYDRA holding him back. He wouldn’t blame James if he did want that, but Clint isn’t sure if he can just lay down and let them kill him. He doesn’t think he can do that. If he dies, it’s going to be by his own hand, under his own control. Let him take just a bit of the reins over his own end.

He stands on the top of a hill in Wakanda, a guard behind him, and wonders about what’s going to happen next.


	6. i will dream of the sweetest things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rape tw

Shuri did something to James's brain that makes him sleep for nearly 24 hours, and when Clint joins them back in the infirmary, James looks calmer, happier even. It makes Clint’s heart hurt to see it.

He spent the entire day in his cell, and they only brought him one meal. But he doesn’t say anything about that to Wilson when the man asks him how his day went, he just shrugs and ducks his chin and follows them back down to the safe room downstairs.

Clint had asked Shuri how safe it was, and she’d assured him that no matter how mad or strong the Soldier is, he can’t get out. Clint takes that to mean there’s about a 70% chance he can get out. None of them have really taken him seriously with how strong the Soldier is. They think that because he doesn’t have the metal arm anymore that he’s not as much of a threat. But Clint has seen what the Soldier can do when the arm is immobilized or broken, and he knows better than to underestimate him. But he doesn’t say anything now. He tried to warn them, after all.

They’re escorted into the safe room and Rogers locks them in. Clint takes his seat and James sits at the other end of the room. Shuri is confident she’s gotten the words out of James’s head, but there’s only one way to test that. So Clint has the unenviable job to try to activate the Winter Soldier.

He clears his throat. He waits until James meets his gaze, and Clint keeps looking at him as he says the words. They’re as familiar to Clint as his own name. “ _Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen,_ ” he begins, voice cautious, the Russian words unfamiliar on his tongue. He's heard them before but he's never taken the risk of actually saying them himself other than the few times he had practiced them. Nothing seems to change in James’s face. Instead, he’s blinking, as if shocked that nothing is happening, and Clint smiles a bit before continuing. “ _Benign, nine, homecoming, one…_ ” He trails off before he says the last word. He doesn’t want to say it. He finds that he doesn’t want the Soldier to be completely gone. He feels awful for it but Clint _misses_ him.

James looks up from the floor and nods at him.

“ _Freight car._ ”

For a moment, nothing happens, and then a small smile flits across James’s face, right as the intercom crackles, and James growls, “Clint.”

Clint surges to his feet and runs to the door, but James—the Soldier—catches him easily. “No,” Clint begs. He’d tried to ask for time to prepare himself for this, just in case, but they hadn’t let him. Rogers had been confident the Soldier was gone and Clint hadn’t had time. There’d been nothing in the cell that he could’ve used as lube, and he’d torn the room apart looking. “Soldier, don’t do this. Please.”

But the Soldier pins him against the wall, growls when Clint tries to get away, and then sniffs him, nips at the back of his neck. He growls in confusion when he notices his left arm is gone, and then pushes his shoulder into Clint’s back, yanks his pants down with his hand. No no no no no no—

“Clint,” he snarls and Clint’s eyes well up with tears as he sags forward against the wall, giving in. He should’ve known better than to miss the Soldier; he just missed the only thing in his life that was constant, the only thing that made sense. The Soldier’s fingers prod at his hole and the Soldier grumbles, “Not wet.” Clint winces and tries to not let himself tense up.

“I didn’t have time,” Clint tells him hoarsely. “I’m sorry. They wouldn’t let me.”

That annoys the Soldier for some reason and he lets out a grumble. “Mine,” the Soldier says, and Clint nods immediately.

“Yours,” he agrees, because he could never be anything else.

When the Soldier enters him, it hurts. It makes Clint cry out in pain and try to scramble against the wall to get away. He doesn’t understand why Wilson and Rogers haven’t come in to save him, haven’t come in to stop the Soldier, but the pain clears all thoughts from his mind other than _It hurts, God please make it stop, it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts—_

The Soldier bites down again on the back of his neck, grinds his teeth in, and he groans as the Soldier fills him up. He can never remember it hurting this much. It feels like someone pushed barbed wire inside of him. “Please,” Clint sobs. “Soldier, you have to stop. It hurts.”

“Good,” the Soldier growls. “Means you’re mine.” He turns his head at a sound and then pulls out of Clint, who tries to crumple to the ground with a whine of pain, but the Soldier keeps him standing with his arm around Clint’s waist. Then the Soldier looks around and pulls Clint over to the table in the center of the room. For the first time, Clint really begins to fight.

“No,” he says. “You said no more tables.”

The Soldier grunts at that but still pushes Clint down, face first, hips pressed to the edge of the table. Clint tries to get away, tries to get up, tries to kick back, but he knows better. It’ll never work. There aren’t even any restraints but the table is cold and it shocks Clint into submission and he lets out a sob and lays his head back down. At least it’s only the Soldier, he tells himself. At least there’s no one else. There’s a sound behind him and then the Soldier’s mouth is on his hole and it makes Clint whine. 

The door slams open and the Soldier shoots to his feet. “Don’t!” Clint says, struggling to stand up, but the Soldier pushes him back down. “He’ll kill you. I promise he’ll kill you,” he tells them, and then he whimpers as the Soldier’s tree trunk cock shoves back inside of him. He hasn’t been fucked in seven months, the longest he’s gone by far in over twenty years, and it seems his body has forgotten how to open. Every thrust feels like sandpaper and Clint doesn’t remember the Soldier’s cock being this big, but it feels like he’s fucking him with a fucking Pringles can.

The Soldier is snarling, growling, and Clint looks up as there’s a small _pop_ and then the Soldier stiffens behind him, then crumples to the ground. The second his dick is out of Clint, Clint runs. The door is blocked by guards and Wilson and Rogers are at the forefront, and if either of them fuck him, Clint’ll kill them. There’s nowhere for him to go and he wavers, then falters, and then backs himself into a corner, curls up in a ball, and presses his face to his knees, wraps his arms around his head, and tries not to cry.

It hurts. It feels like someone shoved a firecracker up his ass and set it off. He’s bleeding, he can tell, and he’s torn and if they’d just let him prepare himself like he’d _asked_ then he could’ve avoided all this. He should’ve known better than to trust that the Soldier could be gone. He’s always going to be in there. Clint shudders at hearing footsteps come closer to him and wants to take his hearing aids out, just wants everything to be quiet and calm, and then Wilson’s voice comes and says, “We knocked him out. We need to get you looked at.”

Clint shakes his head. He knows what _looked at_ means. “No,” he says, and then he says it again. “No!” He doesn’t want it anymore. He doesn’t want the Soldier back, he doesn’t want James back, he doesn’t want anything. He’d tried to help and he’d just been hurt instead. The Soldier had hurt him and Clint hadn’t wanted it, and the Soldier had fucked him anyway. He’d even put him on a table and James had said no more tables, Clint remembered that, and the Soldier had put him on one anyway.

“Whoa, man,” Wilson says, and then there’s a hand on his shoulder. Clint jerks and tries to push himself further into the corner. He doesn’t want to do it anymore. HYDRA is gone. There’s no one left that can make him do anything. He’s not going to let anyone fuck him again. He’ll kill himself if he has to. If he’s dead, they can do whatever they want to his body, but he won’t have to do know about it. “I promise he won’t hurt you again.”

“I told you,” Clint spits out. “I told you that if the trigger words weren’t gone then he’d hurt me. Nobody listened to me.” He takes in a shuddering breath and tries to swallow down the tears. It hurts so much and he doesn’t ever remember it hurting this much.

“I know and I’m sorry,” Wilson says, and he really sounds it. “We should’ve listened. Shuri is working on getting the words out and she’ll make sure he’s never activated again. I promise he’s not going to hurt you.”

“I didn’t want it,” Clint sobs out. “I didn’t want it.”

“Can I ask something, Clint? Did you ever want it?”

Clint nods. The question makes him take pause and lets his racing mind calm down as he thinks. “When I got older and he got nicer, I liked it. But I didn’t want any of the others.” He wipes his teary eyes on his face and tries to calm himself down. “There were so many,” he says, and he doesn’t really know why he’s telling Wilson this, but the words seem to spill out of him. “And it happened all the time. But I _told you_ and you didn’t let me get ready! Even HYDRA let me get ready,” he spits out. They’re worse than the Nazis who raped him for years and he wants them to know that. At least the HYDRA agents used lube. Fucking Steve Rogers is crueler than HYDRA. It’s _Captain America_ who let this happen to him, who just stood by and watched as the Soldier pinned him down and fucked him. 

He’s cold and he rubs at his arms, starting to shiver. “Hey, now,” Wilson says, and someone else comes closer. “You’re going into shock. We need to go take care of you.”

“No,” Clint spits. “No one else is gonna touch me. I’ll kill ‘em.”

Wilson moves closer and Clint jerks away, glares at him out of the corner of his eye. “Look at me,” Wilson implores, his voice soft. Clint looks. “Ain’t anyone here that’s gonna hurt you. I swear. They’ll put Bucky in a cell and we’ll give you a room that no one else can get in. But you gotta see a doctor, man. You’re tore up real bad, I can tell.”

“I’ll get food?” Clint asks. Wilson nods, but he looks annoyed, so Clint reassures him, “I only need to eat once a day. Every other day, even.”

“Once you’re healed up, you can eat as much as you want,” Wilson promises him. “But you need a doctor. Come on, they have something that you can sit on so you don’t have to walk.”

“No one's gonna tie me down,” Clint tells Wilson, who holds out a hand. “I won’t let them.”

“I’ll be here the whole time,” Wilson swears. “No one is gonna do anything to you that you don’t want.”

Clint takes his hand and Wilson pulls him to his feet. He waves over a few guards, who are escorting a floating gurney, and Wilson gives him a sympathetic look as Clint winces and whines as he climbs onto the gurney. He closes his eyes and holds Wilson’s hand and lets them take him upstairs.

He doesn’t care anymore about what they do to him. He just wants to die.

* * *

When he wakes up, he’s in a strange room, on a strange bed, and it’s dark, and there’s a shape in the dark that he realizes after a second is Wilson, asleep. His ass hurts, but hurts a lot less than he was expecting. He sighs. He wonders where the Soldier is, how long he’s been asleep, and what kind of pain meds these are because he’s never felt this good in his life. 

Wilson makes a movement and then sits up, rubs at his eyes, and then he notices that Clint is awake and a smile crosses his face. He says something but Clint can’t hear. He just shakes his head and Wilson frowns, and then reaches over to the table he’s next to and holds out Clint’s hearing aids.

Clint winces as he leans forward and Wilson pushes the aids into his hands. Clint looks down at them for a minute before putting them in and turning them on. “Where is he?” he asks, voice crackling. Wilson stands up and gets him a glass of water. “I’m not supposed to drink anything until I’m healed up.”

Wilson sighs. “I hate that you know that,” he says, but he’s still holding out the water. “They were able to heal you up. You can have liquids but not solids for a week, just in case.”

“Only a week?” Clint asks as he takes the glass with one shaking hand and sips at it as Wilson sits back down. “That’s impressive.” He looks down at the water as he says, “He must’ve not torn me up as bad as I thought.”

Wilson sighs again. “You were in surgery for three hours,” he tells Clint. “They also repaired some of the scarring. Clint, you...they showed us up-close holograms of the scars. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen and I’m so sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad for you, man.” Wilson shakes his head. “Okay, I was going to hold off on telling you, but I’ll just say it now. They put Bucky in a coma and he fought his way out.”

“He’s gone?” Clint asks, horrified.

“No,” Wilson tells him. “They caught him and put him back under. But he was...he’s not doing well.”

Clint puts the glass on the small table next to the hospital bed and groans under his breath as he tries to move over to get up. Wilson immediately stands up and puts his hands on Clint’s shoulders. “You can’t walk,” Wilson tells him. Clint snorts and Wilson shakes his head. “I know you’ve had worse, but it’s time to start taking care of yourself over him. T’Challa said you can stay here while you heal up and we’ll keep you and Buck separated until the Solder is out of his head.”

“If he wakes up, he’ll find me. You don’t know what he’s capable of. I _told you_ he would be unpredictable if he activated.”

Wilson nods. “We underestimated him and I apologize for that. You never should’ve been left alone with him.”

Clint shakes his head. “He would’ve killed you. Wilson, he’s stronger and faster and smarter and better trained and he—”

“I know,” Wilson assures him, cutting Clint off. He sits back down when Clint doesn’t seem to be making the effort anymore to get up. “Shuri was confident she’d gotten the trigger words out and we shouldn’t have let you be the guinea pig. Do you know why he...attacked you like that?”

“That’s how he was when I was first given to him,” Clint says quietly, picking at the sheets with his fingers. “Feral, almost. Like a monster.”

“I hate to think what he did to you if he was worse than that,” Wilson says, shaking his head. “But it’s never gonna happen again, I promise. Shuri is fixing it.” He pauses, then says, carefully, “When you said that he killed over a dozen people because they touched you, how did they touch you?”

Clint shifts and then winces as a spike of pain shoots up his back. “They used to warm me up for him,” he murmurs, barely able to say it out loud.

“Is that why you didn’t like the table?”

Clint stiffens. “He said he’d never use a table again,” he tells Wilson, and strangely enough, tears well up in Clint’s eyes. He rubs at them. He feels like such a coward. He’s gone through so much worse than one rough fuck but this just feels like the end of the line, like he’s one mean word away from snapping completely. “He promised.”

“What happened, Clint?”

He looks at Wilson, looks at his kind face and his gentle eyes and Clint sniffles. “They had an examination table. Well, a few of them. One in each compound. They were all metal and they were used for when the Soldier needed surgery. They were the only things that could keep him down.”

“Hold on, keep him down? If he needed surgery, wouldn’t he be put under?”

Clint shifts uncomfortably. “They never used anesthesia. Every time we had to get surgery, we’d be conscious.”

“Clint, God. I don’t even know what to say.”

He shrugs. “The table was cold. It was always cold, no matter how long I was on it. They would make me strip down and then lay down and they’d strap my arms in. Then they’d prepare me. They used to, um, make sure I was ready for him, but the Soldier found out about that. He didn’t like it.”

“What did he do to them?”

Clint fiddles with the edge of the sheet again. “He came in early and saw I was crying. It always hurt more when it wasn’t the Soldier. He was rough but I could tell he cared, y’know? But they were laughing and one of them was still in me, and he yanked the guy back and literally pulled his dick off. I’m pretty sure he died. Then he hurt the rest of them, but they were all behind me, so I could barely see. I know some of them got away and he tracked them down and killed them.”

“What happened then?”

“He fucked me,” Clint answers, confused as to why it’s even a question. He belonged to the Soldier, why wouldn’t he fuck him?

He looks at Wilson, who looks stricken. Wilson takes in a deep breath, holds it, and then lets it out. He looks troubled and tired and like he doesn’t know what to do with what Clint is telling him, but Clint doesn’t know how to stop. He hasn’t had anyone to talk to in decades about what was happening to him and now that he does, it feels like someone opened a dam and there’s no way to shut it off. “I’m sorry,” Wilson says again, and he sounds like he means it.

Clint yawns, tries to hide it behind his hand, and Wilson smiles slightly at him. “I’ll let you take a nap,” Wilson tells him gently, and he stands up. Clint stops himself from asking him if he’ll stay, and Wilson glances over him, gives him a kind look and says, “Look, I’ll be back, alright? There’s guards posted outside. No one is getting in here.”

Clint nods slowly and watches Wilson as he leaves. He sinks back against the pillows and tries to move around to get comfortable, but the pain meds seem to be wearing off, and he wants more but doesn’t know how to ask. So he grimaces and slides his legs out of bed and the second his feet touch the floor, overhead lights switch on and the door opens.

A guard looks inside and frowns at him. “You are supposed to be resting,” she tells him, accent thick, and Clint winces.

“It hurts,” he whines, and the guard gives him a sympathetic look and comes in to help him get his legs back under the covers. He notices a weird tugging and waits until her back is turned to looks under his hospital gown to notice that he has a catheter in. Gross.

Shuri and another woman come in just a minute later and Shuri rattles off a dozen questions about his health and how he feels while Clint just stares at her in shock. She was the one who said the Soldier was gone, that the words were out of James’s head, and now he’s just supposed to act like nothing's wrong?

Shuri pauses as the doctor gives Clint a few pills and a full glass of water. “I am sorry,” Shuri says. “I am rarely wrong.”

“Well, you were this time,” Clint rasps out, and swallows down the pill and half the cup. “But thanks, I guess.”

Shuri nods and then the doctor says, “We were successfully able to treat the tears left by the attack, and were able to heal a few of the older scars, but it would take at least two more surgeries to heal the anal scars completely, and a minimum of one laser surgery to remove the marks on your shoulders and back, perhaps two.”

Clint swallows. “I don’t have much money,” he starts, but Shuri cuts him off.

“You do not owe us anything,” she tells him. “Money or otherwise. Even if it cost us to help you, you will still not need to pay us. It was my actions that led to this, and we will do whatever it takes to make you better.”

Clint meets her gaze and nods. “Thank you,” he whispers. “Can I ask you for something?”

“Of course,” Shuri tells him.

“Can you make me new hearing aids?”

Her eyes light up and she nods. “I will begin immediately!” and then she rushes out of the room.

The doctor affectionately rolls her eyes and gives Clint a small smile. “She is very smart and very young,” the doctor remarks. “But you seem to be doing well. Do you need anything? Books?”

Clint glances at her. They’re trying to help him, he reminds himself. They’re not going to judge him. So he says, “Do you have any type of tablet or something I can use?” He can’t be the only person in the world who has trouble reading, and he wants to figure out why.

“I’ll go ask Shuri,” the doctor tells him with a smile, and leaves him alone. Clint sighs and relaxes back into the pillows, lets his eyes shut. He can feel the meds start to work and slow, warm heat begins to suffuse him, relaxing his muscles and joints and makes the pain easier to ignore. He slides down in bed and rolls over onto his side, pulls out his hearing aids and lets himself sink into sleep.

When he wakes up, Steve Rogers is sitting next to his bed, and the pain is excruciating. It feels like someone put a crowbar up his ass and tried to pry his spine out from the inside. Tears well up in his eyes without his consent and he tries to sit up but his arms won’t hold him. Rogers reaches out for him but Clint bares his teeth and pulls away from him, so all Rogers does is just hold out his hearing aids. Clint takes them and slides them in and weakly reaches out for the pain meds on the table next to his bed, and Rogers quickly moves around to help him pick them up and helps him lift the cup to his mouth. Then Rogers steps back and sits back down.

“Where’s Wilson?” Clint rasps. He doesn’t want to be alone with Rogers.

Rogers picks up a piece of glass off the table next to him and taps it. “He's busy. Shuri gave this to you. It connects to the Internet, does everything a regular tablet can do. But you can’t send messages, post on any sites, anything like that. Just so you know.”

So he’s still a prisoner. Good to know. Clint reaches his hands out for the tablet anyway and Rogers hands it over. It’s about the size of a piece of paper, a bit thicker, and when Clint taps on the glass, it lights up. He spends a couple minutes setting up a user profile—painstakingly typing his name in, answering questions about what type of music he likes, what kind of movies and TV shows he likes to watch, things like that—and then he rubs at his eyes and puts the tablet aside. “Can you tell her thanks?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Where’s James?”

Rogers lets out a sigh, crosses his arms over his chest. “They have a hospital room for inmates down the hall. He’s in a medically induced coma and restrained to the bed. He’s not gonna do anything to you.”

Clint nods. “Did you...did you want him to do that to me?” Rogers had been the one most against Clint preparing himself after all. Clint had tried to explain that it wouldn’t take long, that he needed to in case the Soldier was still in there, because he knew what the Soldier would do to him, but Rogers had told him not to, that nothing was going to happen to him. But maybe Rogers lied, maybe he knew Shuri hadn’t finished removing the trigger words—

“No!” Rogers exclaims, looking horrified, and Clint believes him. “God, I just thought...I didn’t think you were lying, but I didn’t think he’d do _that_. Bucky would never...he’s never hurt someone like that. I didn’t think he could.”

“You saw the scars,” Clint tells him unhelpfully. Rogers winces but nods. “They were a lot worse before HYDRA fixed them, you know. I had so much scarring that I would tear every time, no matter how much they prepared me. You _knew_ that and you still didn’t let me get ready.”

“I didn’t realize,” Rogers says imploringly. “But I do now. Barton, I’m just...I don’t even know what to say. I’ve never seen a person act like that. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, and I can’t...you lived like that for over twenty years. I can’t even imagine. It’s unthinkable. I didn’t realize,” he repeats, trailing off. “It was so _horrible._ ”

Clint glances at him, looks at the way Rogers is sitting, the way his hands are clasped between his knees, the way he looks small and worried and frightened. “That wasn’t your friend in there,” Clint tells him slowly. “HYDRA created a monster. You just got a glimpse of him.”

Rogers gives him a small smile and then chuckles, shakes his head slightly. “You shouldn’t be reassuring me. I just watched my best friend rape a man he says he loves. _You_ shouldn’t be saying anything to me. I should be begging you for forgiveness.”

“Love?” Clint repeats softly. “James said he...I don’t understand.”

Rogers winces. “I shouldn’t have said that.” Then he gives Clint a searching look and his face softens, goes into something gentle and caring and Clint realizes it’s not directed at him but instead at James. “You know he loves you, right? He’s doing all this to get better for you.”

“But he left,” Clint tells him, confused. “He told me not to come after him.”

“That’s what I told him to write. At the time, we still thought you were a HYDRA agent keeping him waiting until you could activate him again.”

“Did you think that through at all?!” Clint exclaims, fed up. “You thought the man who had spent most of his life being the Winter Soldier’s fuck toy wanted HYDRA to come back? If I was planning that, why wouldn’t I have put him in cryo? Do you know how many safehouses HYDRA set up for us? Over a dozen, and all of them have cryogenic chambers. All of them _except_ for the one I took him to. Did none of you _think?_ Or did you just want your friend back so bad that you didn’t care who got fucked over in the process? That’s what this has all been about, right? You just wanted your friend back so fuck everyone else, right? God forbid poor abused Clint Barton gets his fucking heart broken and wants to ki—”

Rogers surges to his feet, fists clenched, face dark and thunderous, and Clint blanches and cuts himself off, recoils so far he almost tips off the bed. He won’t fight, he won’t fight, he won’t fight—

Rogers looks terrified and he takes a step back until he’s backed up as far as he can go in the corner, as far as he can get from Clint while still being in the same room. He puts his hands up, plactating, and says, “I’m sorry. Clint. I’m sorry. I won’t hurt you, I won’t touch you, just calm down. _Please._ ”

Clint takes a few deep breaths, resituates himself on the bed, tries to slow his heart rate with deep breaths. It doesn’t feel like it works but something on his face makes Rogers slowly come forward, hands still raised to show he’s not a threat. “I need more pain meds,” Clint mutters, and ducks his head, embarrassed.

“Okay,” Rogers says, and rushes out of the room. Clint picks up the tablet and starts going through the various apps. There’s one for books and Clint taps on that one, figures out how to download a book that looks like it's for kids called _Learning to Read: An Activity Book_ , and begins to page through it. 

It’s hard. It’s really hard. He asks the doctor when she comes in to give him more pills and change his catheter bag for a pen for the tablet, and then he slowly begins to figure out letters and words and does more research over the next few days and learns he’s dyslexic. It’s not his fault he can’t read; his brain is just messed up. Just another part of him that’s screwed up, he guesses.

He also learns that his eyesight is fairly bad. He’s farsighted, which just contributes to his reading problems. They give him glasses and he learns, as he spends the next week in bed, that a lot of things in his life aren’t his fault. He reads, painstakingly slowly, about trauma and the effects of kidnapping and captivity on childhood development, how sexual abuse from a young age, even at 15, can permanently change someone’s brain chemistry and how they process things they experience. He reads about PTSD and the effects of rape on not only the body but the mind.

He learns he had it very, very bad, and also that it could’ve been far, far worse.

Wilson spends a lot of time with him, which is a surprise. He brings a book and reads while Clint struggles through figuring out which letters are which, and gently encourages Clint to read out loud to him when things get too twisted up in his head. He’s so _nice_ ; Clint doesn’t understand it at all. But he goes along with it, and Wilson is there when they remove the catheter and he gets to take his first uncomfortable steps. It’s strange to be out of bed, but he gets stronger quickly, and they let him take walks around the small hospital wing.

He stops outside James’s room a week after he woke up, peers at him through the window in the door. Everything else in Wakanda is all glass and sleek, but the room James is in is closed off, secure, with only a small window to see in. Clint wants to go in and sit with him, hold his hand, get himself ready for what the Soldier is going to do him when he wakes up, but instead he just looks at him through the door.

Clint limps back to his room after going around the entire wing twice and is surprised when Wilson is in there, a food tray sitting on the table next to him. Wilson smiles at him and Clint gets up on his bed and Wilson hands him the tray. It’s all bland, soft foods, but it’s better than the goddamn smoothies he was having to gulp down three times a day. Clint takes a few bites and sighs, leaning his head back against the pillows.

“Were they not feeding you?” Wilson asks. “When you were in that cell?”

Clint shrugs one shoulder. “I got fed once or twice,” he hedges.

“You’re a person,” Wilson implores. “You deserve to be fed three times a day. Now, Clint, how many times were you being fed?”

“I wasn’t,” Clint whispers, glaring at the food on the tray. “Dunno why it matters, Wilson.”

“It matters,” Wilson assures him, then gets up and tells him he’ll be right back. Clint shrugs and forces himself to clear the plate and then shoves it onto the table next to his bed. He’s dozing off when Wilson comes storming back in. “It was Steve,” Wilson snarls, hands curled into fists. “He told them not to feed you."

“What?” Clint yawns, sitting up. “Oh. Well that makes sense, I guess. Rogers doesn’t like me.” He doesn't know why the guards would listen to Rogers but he guess it makes sense. "Does T'Challa know?"

“He does now. He said that Steve asked to oversee your imprisonment when he came in here. I think he agreed because you were a HYDRA agent. It’s like I don’t even _know him,_ ” Wilson tells him, shaking his head. He gives Clint a pained look. “He wouldn’t even tell me why. Just said he told them not to feed you. Who is he?”

“He wanted to punish me,” Clint says slowly, looking down at his hands in his lap. “I don’t know why he hates me so much.”

Wilson sighs. “He’s jealous,” he says quietly, sitting back down and sighing. “You got all that time with Bucky and he didn’t. It's not rational but it's how he feels.”

Clint feels pretty gross at that, but he shrugs one shoulder. “Weirdo,” he mutters, and Wilson pauses for a second, and then they’re both chuckling over it.

Clint is grinning down at his lap when he hears a small noise from the doorway. He looks up and James is in the doorway, staring at him.


	7. cause there's still a little light that shines

“Clint,” the Soldier growls, and Clint seizes up, watches as Wilson moves in between Clint and James, hand outstretched to stop the Soldier from coming in further. “ _Clint._ ”

Stupid, stupid Clint, getting all complacent and comfortable like that. He should’ve known. He takes a deep breath and swings his legs over the side of the bed, but Wilson moves back to put a hand on his shoulder to stop him from getting up.

The Soldier makes a sound in his chest, something like an annoyed grumble, and Clint frowns, lifts his head to look at him. That isn’t a sound the Soldier makes. Clint’s never heard that. So, he takes a risk, and takes Wilson’s hand into his, uses him to pull himself to his feet. James bares his teeth and Clint takes a step forward, dropping Wilson’s hand. 

“How did you wake up?”

This isn’t James. But it’s not the Soldier either. Clint doesn’t know this man at all. But he also knows James, and he knows the Soldier better than he knows himself, and neither of them would hurt him, not in a way that counts, not in a way that he hasn’t been hurt before. So he steps forward, ignores the way Wilson tries to stop him.

“I smelled you,” James growls. “I smelled that you were hurt.”

“I’m hurt because of you,” Clint tells him, slowly and softly and simply. “I’m hurt because you raped me.”

James takes a step back, shaking his head, long hair falling into his face. “I’d never,” he swears empathetically. “Clint,” he says again, desperate. “You always wanted it.”

“I was a _kid,_ ” Clint hisses. “I was _fifteen_ when they gave me to you. To the Soldier. No kid could want that. You were a beast who nearly killed me then, and you tried to kill me the last time I was alone in a room with you. Why should I even listen to you, James?”

“I didn’t know,” James says slowly, and then he lifts his hand to rub at his forehead. “Oh, it hurts. My head hurts. Clint, what’s happening to me?”

Because he can’t help it, because he’s been trained to do so, because he cares more about James than he cares about himself, Clint goes to him. James slumps against him right as two guards rush in and Clint holds James close for just a few seconds before he hands the man off to them. Wilson comes up next to him as they watch James get injected with something that knocks him out and then dragged away. 

“He smelled you?” Wilson asks, a bit of a smile in his voice.

Clint chuckles. “The Soldier likes the way I smell,” he admits with a shrug. “I’m used to it.”

“I’m kinda curious,” Wilson mutters, but shakes his head when Clint tilts his chin and points to his neck. “Hell no, man, the guy woke up out of an induced coma for you. I’m not gettin’ in the middle of that.” Then he winks. “Don’t need Steve gettin’ jealous, y’know?”

“Wait, you’n Rogers?” Clint asks. “I thought…”

“What, Steve and Buck? Naw.”

“No, _you_ and James.”

Wilson looks shocked and then he scratches his goatee. “Huh. I’m kinda curious where you pulled that from, but no, man, Cap’s it for me. He’s _Captain America_ , y’know? And he asked me out and it was like every teenage fantasy I had come true and, well, sheesh. Can’t say no to that.” Clint gives him a strange look that Wilson manages to interpret correctly and Wilson elaborates, “Not like that. Not how you’re thinking. More like, you want something so bad that if it’s offered, there’s no way you can turn it down. That’s what I meant.”

Huh. Clint wonders what that’s like. He nods and goes back to his bed, climbs in with a wince. He’s not on pain meds anymore but sometimes it aches, deep inside. He really did heal up quick; he’s impressed. He wants to tell Shuri but hasn’t seen her since the first day.

He picks up his tablet again and goes back to his spelling exercises while Wilson sits down and picks up his own book. They sit in comfortable silence for awhile until one of the guards knocks on the door and tells Wilson he’s needed somewhere else, and then Clint is alone.

He spends the next two days by himself, other than the once-daily visits he gets from his doctor. Her name is Obenu and her hands are gentle when she has to examine inside of him and she always wears gloves and they talk about how long it’ll be until he can have more scars removed and then he goes back to reading. It’s kind of nice, being alone. It doesn’t happen to him very often; or, at least, it’s not something that happens to him voluntarily. Being alone used to mean pain, but Clint is starting to find the pleasure in it.

That night, when the guards are rotating shifts and the door is closed and the lights are turned down low, he masturbates for the first time in as long as he can remember. It’s over quick, and all it takes is thinking about the times he and James had been together on the couch, where James had been so slow and careful with him, like he was something special, something important, not just a used up old whore like he knows he is, and he’s hard and he spits in his palm and squeezes his eyes shut and strokes himself a few times, his own pre-come slicking the way, then heat suffuses him as he spurts into his palm. He takes a few tissues and cleans himself up, hopes that no one saw, and leans his head back against the pillows and stares sightlessly up at the ceiling while his breathing calms back down.

He doesn’t know if James is ever going to want him back. Now, at the end of this, wherever it’s heading, Clint doesn’t even know if he wants James anymore. He doesn’t know if he can look at James and see anyone other than the Soldier who ignored him begging not to be hurt and pushed him up against the wall and down to the table and took what he wanted from him anyway.

He thinks about Wilson telling him that James had to find himself without Clint, that he needed to learn who he was as a separate person, and Clint wonders if he even _can_ , if there is a part of him that’s still Clint-without-James, a Clint-without-the-Soldier, and he decides he goddamn well intends to find out.

* * *

He wakes up to see King T’Challa sitting next to his bed, frowning down at Clint’s tablet. Clint scrambles for it and snatches it from him with a, “That’s _mine!_ ” and then he remembers he just grabbed something out of a King’s hands and freezes.

T’Challa merely smiles at him and shakes his head. “Forgive me,” he says to Clint, who doesn’t want to but this is a literal King so he just nods slowly. “I did not mean to pry, but you slept very deeply and for very long, and I must admit, I grew curious. You are progressing very quickly in your studies. If you like, I can supply a personal tutor.”

Clint shakes his head immediately. He can’t imagine explaining to someone that isn’t Wilson about his difficulties reading. “No, thank you,” he says slowly. “Do you...need something? Sir? Your Majesty?”

T’Challa smiles at him. It’s a lovely smile and it brightens his face and immediately puts Clint at ease. “Please, you do not need to refer to me as such. I merely came to give my apologies that I had not visited you sooner, and to offer more apologies for how you have been treated in my home. I have merely been very busy with a great amount of political fallout from the Accords. But I am here now.”

“Are you in trouble?” Clint asks, sitting up straight. “Am I in trouble?”

“You have been fully pardoned from all crimes you committed under your, if it can be said, employment at HYDRA. Your government allowed that there were extenuating circumstances and that you would not be charged with any of the crimes you committed.”

“Hold on, I didn’t commit any crimes,” Clint interrupts. “They made me do all that. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Illegal activity under duress is still illegal,” T’Challa tells him gently. “But you are not a criminal. You are a victim, if anything, and again, I have come to apologize.” He leans forward, takes one of Clint’s hands, and Clint looks down at it and then back up at him. “My sister was irresponsible and put you in a position where not only were you irrevocably harmed, but also could have been killed. I allowed you to come into my country, my _home,_ under the belief that you could help the horrors that had been enacted against James Barnes and instead, we caused those horrors to happen to you. 

“I am deeply, terribly sorry. I was under the same misguided belief that Captain Rogers was, that you were willfully a HYDRA soldier, and I allowed you to be mistreated because of that. I know that my sister and my country can help you and James. I see suffering in the world and I am to fix it. It is my duty. Wakanda is open to you and you will have all the rights as a citizen. It is the least I can do for what has been done to you.” With that, T’Challa drops his hand and sits up straight, looking at him expectantly. 

Clint rubs the back of his neck. He wonders if their treatment of him would still be deserved if he’d gone into HYDRA willingly. “Does that mean I have somewhere to go? I don’t have to stay here in this room?”

“I will have a home built for you. Tell me what you want and it will be done.”

Clint squirms uncomfortably, but he tells him, “I just want to be left alone. I want sightlines and a pond, maybe, and no trees. Well, maybe one tree. But I don’t need anything big or fancy or anything like that. I just like watching sunrises and sunsets. That’s all.”

T’Challa smiles at him. He’s very handsome, Clint realizes, and he blushes. He’s nearly 40 and he _blushes_. “I will inform our architects right away. I am glad to see you better, Clint Barton.” T’Challa pushes to his feet and reaches forward to pat Clint’s leg under the blankets. “Welcome home.”

Clint watches him leave and then looks down at the tablet in his hands, feeling a sense of wonder overtake him. _Home_. He can’t imagine what that’s like. 

He looks forward to finding out.

* * *

There’s crickets in Wakanda. Clint assumes there’s crickets most places, but this is the first time he’s heard them since he was a kid. Shuri made him new hearing aids and they’re _amazing_ , and even better, they’re bright purple. Somehow she learned that’s his favorite color. 

They built a small little house for him. Well, Clint would call it a hut, but it’s kind of a hut-house. Maybe a cabin? He’s not sure. It’s lovely, though. There’s two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a nice sized kitchen, and a small living area that’s divided into two by a low wall. On one side there’s a couch and a couple chairs and an empty bookcase, along with a device that Clint thinks is supposed to be a TV, and on the other is a small dining area for about four or six people. It’s perfect.

He’s never really had a place of his own before. He doesn’t count the safehouse in Iowa; that’d never really been _his_ , especially since James left him. But this is all his. He has his own couch, his own throw blankets, his own sheets and comforters and his own cookware and his own fridge and his own stove and his own forks and knives and spoons and it’s all a bit too much sometimes. He asks around and someone gives him a long bow and some arrows, and he ends up studying it and figuring out a design he likes better and learning how to make his own bow and arrows.

Wilson and Rogers come to visit fairly regularly. Clint doesn’t know how to cook but he can look up anything on his tablet and there’s a few guards that keep his fridge filled with anything he asks for, so he teaches himself how. They give him a kimoyo bracelet and he learns how to use it through a lot of trial and error, and eventually, after a couple weeks, he learns how to make calls with it. He calls Natasha first. He knows she’s not going to answer, so he lets it ring three times, hangs up, and then when he calls it again, she answers after the first ring.

“Clint?”

“Nat. Hey.”

“What number is this? Where are you calling from? You disappeared off the face of the Earth.”

“I’m with Rogers and Wilson and James in Wakanda. They put us up here.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that and it takes her a minute to say, “How’re they treating you?”

He smiles, ducks his chin. “Better than I’m used to.”

He can hear the smile in her voice as she says, “That doesn’t mean much.” Then she asks, “Do you need anything? How is he?”

He swallows, jigs his leg, then gets up and walks outside to pace around. It’s strange looking down at his wrist instead of holding a phone, and since Nat is on a phone and doesn’t have kimoyo beads of her own, there’s just her name instead of a projection of her. It’s still cool though. HYDRA didn’t have stuff like this, or, at least, they never let Clint see it. “I haven’t seen him in two weeks,” he tells her, sitting at the edge of the pond near his home and dipping his feet in the water. “He attacked me almost a month ago and it took me a week to heal up.”

“Only a week?”

“I said the same thing,” Clint laughs. “They’re real smart down here. They were even able to remove some of the scarring.” She doesn’t say anything and Clint remembers she didn’t know about the first surgery; he never told her because he was ashamed. So he continues, “I think James is doing alright, though. I haven’t heard anything and he hasn’t found me again.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do?”

Clint shrugs. “All I’m doing right now is figuring myself out. What are you doing?”

“Like everyone else, I’m on the run. You looking for work? I have some leads for you if you need them.”

He considers it. “Not yet,” he sighs. “Give me awhile. I gotta figure myself out first.”

“Take your time, Hawkeye. Not too much of it though. Folks like you and me? We don’t have as much of it as regular folks.” He hears some sort of movement on her end of the line. “I need to go. Good hearing from you.”

“You too,” he tells her, and ends the call.

He stares at the pond and the lowering sun for awhile, not really thinking about anything in particular. He doesn’t even know if he wants to go back to work, but what else can he do? All he did for over twenty years was get fucked and take out people for HYDRA and go on missions for SHIELD. None of that sounds like it could apply in any way to the real world. He doesn’t even know what else he could do. All he knows other than all of that is how to fuck and he doesn’t think he wants to do that anymore. He knows what he looks like and he’s not young anymore; he couldn’t make any money whoring himself out, and it’s not like he was ever really good at that anyway, since they just strapped him down and used him. He can’t imagine there’s enough money in that and if there is, he doesn’t think he wants to be part of it.

He decides he wants more of the internal scarring removed, but he wouldn’t recognize himself without the bite scars. He makes the trek up to the palace once a week or so to talk with Shuri, gives her as much information about the Soldier as he can think of, and doesn’t ask about what’s happening with James. Every time he thinks about him all he can remember is James promising to never fuck him on a table again and the Soldier pinning him down on one anyway. So he does his best to help and then goes back home to think about something else, anything else.

Sam comes over the most, and Steve occasionally accompanies him. Sometimes one or both of them leave Wakanda and Steve always stops by to ask if Clint wants to go with. It’s the fourth time Steve asks that Clint surprises himself by saying yes.

It’s a simple mission, really, but Clint does his best to show that he deserves to help. He’s quick, after all, and he’s a good shot. Steve doesn’t say anything about him bringing his bow and even gives him an impressed look when Clint shoots an arrow at someone who was sneaking up on him. They’re breaking into a compound and put Clint in a sniper position and he silently takes out all the security guards and patrolmen that he can see, and when he tells Steve and Sam it’s clear, they’re both shocked he did it that fast.

But they go in, steal whatever it is they need to steal, and when they’re walking back to the Quinjet a few miles off, Clint asks what they’re doing here. Steve explains about HYDRA compounds and the information hidden away in each of them, how they stored parts of their databases in different bases so that none of it was completely accessible from one location. They have a lot of information about HYDRA and their goals from what Natasha had dumped, but there’s always more. Clint shoots him an amused look.

“Yeah,” he says slowly, putting an arrow tip on his finger and balancing it, “I’m the one who came up with that. What I don’t get, though, is how that base was manned at all.”

Sam speaks up. “That wasn’t a HYDRA base. It was an AIM base.”

“AIM is HYDRA,” Clint tells him. Steve stops in his tracks. “They sectioned off that part of the organization about a decade ago, I think. It’s their scientific and weaponry division. Half the weapons I used were made by AIM.”

Steve turns on his heel and starts walking back towards the base, gritting his teeth. Sam and Clint exchange looks and then turn around and follow him. “How were they not taken down with the rest of HYDRA?” Sam asks.

“If they weren’t in the file dump,” Clint shrugs. “And they kind of distanced themselves so no one would know they were HYDRA. That’s the whole point, you know, that even if the big main head of the beast is chopped off, there’s still two more it take its place. You didn’t think they had contingency plans in place?”

“I kinda just assumed we got them all,” Sam tells him, glancing at Steve’s tight shoulders. “Cap?”

“After we kill all of them,” Steve growls, “you’re telling me everything you know, Barton.”

Back to Barton. Great.

Clint puts his chin down and gets to work.

Afterwards, after Clint pulls his last arrow and last knife out of the last agent, he turns and looks at Steve, who’s breathing heavily and glaring at him. “What else?” Steve growls. “What else are you hiding?”

Clint puts his hands up, backs up a few steps. “I’m not hiding anything,” he swears. “I just thought you knew. I don’t know what you don’t know, man.”

“Who else is HYDRA?” Steve snarls, advancing on him. He has blood splatters on his uniform, an already healing cut on his face, and his fists are clenched and bloody. Clint watched him beat a few men half to death before Clint took pity on them and shot them in the head with arrows.

He glances around the room for Sam, who is off checking computers, and then Clint lifts his chin and clenches his own fists. “They have agents in every level of government, in every sector, in every single building. I know, I trained a lot of them in subversion and deception. They all have contingency plans for every situation. They would find disenfranchised and apathetic government agents and slowly twist them up until they swore loyalty to HYDRA. I was on the front lines of this, I watched it happen dozens of times. Hell, I helped them find agents who were susceptible to being manipulated into joining. There’s no way that HYDRA put all their eggs in one basket, they’re way too smart for that.”

Steve nods, slowly calming down. He flexes his fists a few times and looks around at the agents on the floor. “Do you know any of them? Have you been here before?”

Clint shrugs, glances around. “They took me a lot of places,” he tells Steve. “I usually only saw a couple rooms of each place, though. It was rarer that I saw the entirety of a base.” He pushes over a couple of the agents onto their back and then shrugs again. “They don’t look familiar, but that doesn’t say much. Half the time I only knew an agent because of how they fucked me.”

“Jesus Christ, Clint,” Sam mutters from behind them, and Clint turns to see Sam standing in the doorway to the room. “What’s up, Cap?”

“Clint here was just giving me some information,” Steve tells him, eyes still not straying from Clint. “Looks like we still have some work to do.” Sam nods and Steve glances between the two of them. “I’m assuming you’re both in?”

“Of course,” Sam replies easily. Clint nods.

“You think we should call Nat in too? She might know more than me about this kinda stuff. She did a lot more training and recon than I did.”

Steve considers that and then the three of them begin walking out of the compound, Sam setting small explosives as they go. “Will she work with us?” Steve asks. “After all, I haven’t seen her since you told me she was really HYDRA.”

“Only one way to find out,” Clint tells him. “You’re going to have to talk to her about it eventually. She already knows we’re in Wakanda anyway, and she hasn’t come to visit me yet, which means she’s worried about your reaction.”

“You told her we were in Wakanda?” Steve asks, grabbing Clint’s arm and stopping him. “Why would you do that? We’re wanted fugitives, Clint.”

“Yeah, _you_ are,” Clint says slowly, yanking his arm out of Steve’s grasp and rubbing it, giving him a glare. “I’m aware. I told her because I had to know if she’d do anything with that information, and she’s my best friend, so I know better than to blindly trust her. We haven’t had anyone knocking down our doors, right? Or contacting T’Challa to try and get in? So she clearly hasn’t told anyone. She doesn’t have a reason to. She wants me to come work with her again, and she knows I won’t if she tells the government about you two and you’re put in jail, same if anything happens to James.”

Steve gives him a considering look and then they begin walking again. They leave the compound quickly and are back walking towards the Quinjet when Sam sets off the remote detonator and the entire place goes up in flames. Clint pauses and looks back, wonders if it should feel so much like an allegory for his past.

Their walk back to the Quinjet is silent. Clint isn’t too good at not talking, but it’s not like he wants to piss Steve off any more, so he keeps his lips shut. As the gangway descends, Sam asks, “Do you trust her?”

“With what?” he replies, following the both of them up into the plane. Steve is piloting, and Sam takes the co-pilot seat, and Clint kicks it in one of the jump seats behind them.

Sam considers that, and then extrapolates, “Your life? Our lives? Bucky’s life?”

“Oh, that? Yeah, of course.” Clint buckles himself in as the gangway goes up behind them and the Quinjet’s engines rumble to life. “I probably trust her more than anyone to save my life. She went on missions with us a few times, so I know she’d keep James alive. You two? I mean, you’d have to be the judge of that.”

“What about information? Did Natasha know about AIM? Other wings of HYDRA?”

Clint shifts uncomfortably. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, I’d be very careful. Natasha knows a lot more than you think. She was never loyal to HYDRA, but she did a lot of missions for them.”

“Why do you say she was never loyal?” Steve asks as the Quinjet roars around them and they take off into the sky. “She worked for them for over a decade.”

“She was never loyal in the same way I was never loyal. Not that they ever did to her what they did to me, but we didn’t do more than our jobs, y’know? Some of the bigger zealots really went above and beyond, devoted their whole life to HYDRA. But Nat always had a backup plan, and a dozen more behind that. I trust her but only to a point.”

The two of them consider that. Sam finally asks, “Do you know what she’s doing now? Who she’s working with? She went underground after the Accords.”

“No idea. I could probably find out if you need me to, though.”

“When we get back, I want you to call her. Get everything she knows. I need to know who else knows about HYDRA’s other divisions,” Steve orders, voice tight.

“Sure, Cap,” Clint answers, and they all go quiet again.

It’s a silent flight back to Wakanda, and when they land, Clint waves off the offer of getting himself checked out in the infirmary and makes the long walk back to his hut. He strips off his gear, throws his clothes in a corner, drops his hearing aids on the counter, and goes and stands in the shower, eyes shut, leaning against the wall. He thinks, very sincerely, about running. He’s been doing it in some form or another for his entire life, and he thinks he can run for the rest of it as well. Steve is smart but there’s some things Clint knows better than him.

He stands under the hot, beating water and thinks. He’ll call Nat, he doesn’t have a problem with that. He doesn’t have a problem talking to her and figuring out if she’ll tell him anything. He has a good idea of what she’ll tell him and then he’ll call some other contacts and corroborate her story. But Clint also knows that he was a lot more privy to HYDRA’s inner workings than Natasha ever was, but she’ll know some things that he doesn’t. At least, he hopes he gets enough information that Steve can make his decision, whatever that may be.

Later, after he’s made call after call and talked until his jaw hurts and his brain is swimming, he takes out his hearing aids again and curls up in bed. He’ll go up to the palace and talk to Steve in the morning.

He dreams about James.


	8. deep in my tired eyes

Clint joins Steve and Sam for breakfast in their room inside the palace. Sam cooks, Steve tries to help, and Clint stays out of the way and drinks coffee as he tells them what Nat told him. “I really should’ve hooked up with you two sooner,” Clint muses. “Saying ‘Captain America wants to know’ really opens up a lot of doors. You got a lot of pulling power.” Steve rolls his eyes. “Anyway, she knew about AIM, she also knows about Power Enterprises, along with THEM and Secret Empire. That’s all of the subsidiaries I know about.”

Steve leaves Sam to cook and refills Clint’s coffee mug before escorting him to the kitchen table. Clint sits down across from him and starts to talk.

“AIM does HYDRA’s scientific and weapons research. Power Enterprises is a corporation that goes into small towns, buys up the dying industries, employs half the town again, and slowly starts to make everyone who lives there loyal to HYDRA. They’ve done it a few times that I know of and they’re probably still doing it. I think Secret Empire was mostly taken down in the HYDRA purge from SHIELD, since they definitely did not expect that one at all, but it was built as a red herring for HYDRA. They could pin a lot of HYDRA’s actions on the Empire if they were ever caught. THEM is just a committee of notable members that oversee AIM and Secret Empire.”

Steve gives him a slow, considering look. “Who else knows all of this?”

“Well, Nat does. Rumlow probably knew most of it, the big bastard, and Pierce, of course, knew everything. But HYDRA made sure very few people knew the whole of it.”

“Why do you know so much?”

Clint frowns at him, takes a sip of his coffee. “Because I couldn’t leave. It didn’t matter what I knew because they knew I couldn’t do anything about it.” He sighs. “You don’t understand how isolated my life was, Cap. If I wasn’t taking care of the Soldier, or working with his scientists, I was out in the field, doing mission after mission for them. I never had time to tell anyone anything, and anyway, even if I could, they knew I wouldn’t.” He stops as Sam brings them plates and then sits down with them.

“Why not?” Steve presses.

“I dedicated my entire life to the Soldier,” Clint explains, voice quiet, looking down at his plate. “My entire life revolved around him. Not a day went by that I wasn’t thinking about him or talking about him to someone or arguing with one of his handlers or convincing them to change the temperature of his cryo chamber or anything like that. He was my life. And HYDRA knew that. Hell, that’s what they groomed me for.” He pushes some of the food around with his fork and shifts uncomfortably. “Anyway, not like I had anywhere to go, or not like they couldn’t have tracked me anyway.” He snorts.

“Tracked you?” Sam says slowly, carefully putting down his own fork. 

Clint lifts his arm and points to a scar on his ribs before lowering his arm again. “Right here. Always on, always transmitting, constant signal to an innumerable amount of HYDRA satellites. It sent my GPS location, my vital stats, and if I was with anyone to a few select people. Even if I had tried to run, they would’ve found me. Hell, they did a few times.”

Steve presses both of his hands to the table and levers himself to his feet. Clint frowns up at him, suddenly tense and wary. “How do you know you’re not being tracked right now?”

“Oh, I dug it out after James left,” Clint replies, tension seeping out of his shoulders. He fiddled with his fork again. “Figured since he was gone, HYDRA wouldn’t care about me anymore. Not like they came after us anyway.” He remembers that, remembers sitting out on the porch after getting back from yet another failed attempt to find James again, and setting up a mirror and taking a scalpel and digging around with bloody fingers until he found the chip and pulled it out. He’d crushed it and then flipped off the stars above, hoping maybe one of HYDRA’s satellites was watching him. Steve slowly sits back down. “Anyway, that was just a backup. They knew I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Because of the Soldier?” Sam asks, taking a bite of his food.

“Oh, yeah, and it’s not like anyone I knew back then would’ve helped me get away anyway. But I couldn’t subject anyone to what the Soldier would do to them, and HYDRA knew that, and used it against me. They had videos of him from when he was still out of control and would make me watch them and tell me that’s what he’d do if I left. Had to watch those a lot, actually. They didn’t like me trying to take anything into my own hands.”

“Are you talking about suicide?” Steve questions, voice strangely soft, and Clint looks at him. He wonders if there’s ever been anything bad enough in Steve’s life that he’d rather die than continue having it happen to him, and he doesn’t think so. He can’t imagine anything so big and horrible that it would make Captain America not be able to continue on.

“Is that really so much of a surprise?” Clint asks back, his voice just as soft. Steve really doesn't listen to him, does he? “I’ve barely had a moment’s peace for over twenty years. Every day was torture and pain and all I ever wanted was for it to stop. The only reprieve I ever got was with the Soldier, and that barely lasted, and look where that got me. So, yeah, I tried to kill myself. Quite a few times, actually. You really wanna try and make me feel guilty for that, Rogers?”

“Of course not,” Sam smoothly speaks over Steve before he can really put his foot in his mouth. “No one is judging you, Clint, and I can’t imagine I would’ve done anything different. Now, to go back to the tracking device that was implanted in you. Are you sure that was the only one?”

Clint nods immediately. “Oh, yeah, for sure. I helped them set up the computers and servers for it. My location and the Soldier’s locations were the only ones that were always on. I don’t think anyone else had a chip implanted. But that wasn’t the only way they had of keeping track of me, you know.” At their questioning looks, Clint sighs and pushes to his feet. He yanks off one of his boots and puts his foot up on the table and pulls down his sock and pushes up his pants, twisting around to show them the tattoo on the back of his calf. 

“Is that an asset identification tag?” Sam asks, voice faint. 

Clint nods. “I told you I tried to run,” he replies with a shrug, and after making sure they’ve both gotten a good look, sits back down to put his boot on again. He hasn't looked at the tattoo in a good while but he knows exactly what's marked on his body:

PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT  
CONTROL NO.  
H4WK3Y3  
SERIAL NO.  
1975-01-232  
MARKSMAN, ASSET  
ISSUED TO:  
WINTER SOLDIER ASSET  
MANUFACTURER:  
SHIELD

Yeah, not great, but that’s life. 

Clint eats half of his plate while Sam and Steve look at him in silence. Realization kind of comes to him in waves and he doesn’t look up from his plate as he says, “You know, the Soldier was HYDRA’s most valuable asset. Nothing they wanted accomplished would’ve been possible without him. Do you know what makes the man who is the only reason their most prized Asset will listen to them?” 

“Invaluable,” Sam offers up, and Clint nods. He fiddles with his fork. 

“Probably someone you want to keep in line,” Clint continues. “Probably someone you want to very carefully manage and manipulate so he doesn’t get too big for his britches. HYDRA picked me up young and twisted me up until I could never do anything else. Hell, I still don’t know how to do anything else.”

“Anything other than what?” Steve asks, brow furrowed. 

Clint shrugs one shoulder, doesn’t look at him. “Take care of the Soldier. It’s all I know how to do.”

There’s a small sound from behind them and Clint whips his head around to see that James is standing in the partially open doorway of the bedroom Clint had assumed was empty. He actually hadn’t thought about it, had just figured James was out or asleep, and had put it out of his mind. Not his business anymore. That’s been made plenty clear to him, and now James just heard him say that all he knows is how to take care of him and Clint just—

He’s not gonna deal with it. He’s not. 

“Thanks for breakfast,” he says to Sam, and shoves to his feet. He makes it to the door in just a few rapid strides and he yanks it open and darts down the hallway. 

“Clint?” he hears faintly behind him, and he knows that voice better than he knows his own, but Clint doesn’t look back.

* * *

It’s a week later that Sam stops by to tell him that Shuri has completely gotten the trigger words out of James’s head.

Clint leaves Wakanda two days after that. 

T’Challa told him he could stay, Shuri told him he could stay, Ramonda told him he could stay, Sam and Steve and everyone else had all told him he could stay, and Clint left anyway. He’d already made his decision. He said his goodbyes to everyone, thanked T’Challa and Shuri profusely, told Sam and Steve to call him if they needed anything, walked around his small house and touched everything and would probably miss that place the most, and then he left. They let him use an unmanned Quinjet that would take him anywhere in the world, and Clint sat in it for a long time before he decided to go back to his place in Not Even Towards the Middle of Nowhere, Iowa.

He hadn’t said goodbye to James. He’d wanted to, but he hadn’t. He’s trying to convince himself that part of his life is over, that he’s no longer beholden to the Soldier, that he knows James doesn’t care about him enough to ask him to stay. It’s not working very well.

The flight back to Iowa goes by quick, and Clint looks down at the passing water and landscape, doesn’t let himself think about anything in particular. When the Quinjet lands, Clint descends the gangway, and then runs to the porch before it takes off. He watches it disappear into the horizon and then sighs as he looks around. He didn’t ever think he’d be back here without James, but he’s still alone. He’ll always be alone. He can’t imagine anyone else would ever live up to James, much less even want to be with someone like him.

He doesn’t even last 24 hours before he calls Natasha. He’s unpacking his stuff when he makes the decision, and after he talks to her and tells her he wants to work with her again, he feels a weight rise off his chest. He might not be good for much anymore, but at least he knows he can do this. At the minimum, he’s good at two things: fucking and killing, and without James around, he’s really only able to do one of them.

He finishes unpacking and then tools around the kitchen for awhile, thinking about that. He thinks about fucking someone other than James, _on purpose_ , and feels gross. But maybe he’ll try. After all, James doesn’t want him anymore, so why not try someone else? It’s not like he has any obligation to the man, and it’s not like he has to keep the new guy around. Hell, he could even date a woman. 

Huh. He hasn’t done anything with a woman other than a bit of fumbling fooling around before HYDRA kidnapped him. None of the female agents had ever been interested in him and Clint had never really been taught how to service one of them. But now that he was thinking about it, he remembered being a teenager and being blown away by cleavage and the curve of a woman’s back, same with how he’d blushed at seeing a man’s biceps or the cut of stomach. He thinks about it, but the thought of seeing a naked woman makes his stomach twist up, and he doesn’t know if its in excitement or not.

God, he wouldn’t even know what to do. He barely knows how to be an active participant in sex, let alone be the instigator or how to pursue anything like that. He hadn’t even been able to initiate anything with James, who had been basically incapable of turning him down. 

He wonders if that’s one of the reasons James left, if he felt out of control around Clint, like he needed him so much that he felt unsafe. If he felt the same way Clint feels.

His first mission with Natasha goes smooth as silk. They’ve always worked well together, and Clint has a moment where he thinks about asking her if she’ll show him about pleasing a woman in bed, and then laughs so hard at the thought of Natasha patiently teaching him how to eat pussy that he nearly falls down. She sends him a strange look and then tells him to focus, and he imagines her naked and lecturing him on paying attention while he’s in bed with her and it’s so funny that she ends up kicking him in the side until he’s in more pain than laughter. He doesn’t think about that again. It was a funny idea, though.

He spends more time on missions than he does at home, if it can even be called that. He calls everyone he can think of, every old contact and old number in his phone and gets as much work as he can. Half the time he doesn’t even take payment, or hands half of it back, and sometimes he scoffs at what they offer him and tells them they owe him twice as much. They ask him to do everything from assassinations to perhaps the world’s most boring recon; he got paid nearly 40 grand to hang out in a hotel room for a week and listen to a Senator’s wife fuck anything with a pulse and email everything he overheard. He didn’t mention the irony of sending a deaf guy on missions like that and just takes the money and stores it away.

The more missions he goes on, the more picky he can be. There’s a lot of circles in the world where he’s well known and his skills are highly lauded, and after HYDRA went down, those circles got a lot tighter, and he’s easily able to slip in. So he starts to do good work, for once, and sends whatever information he gets on HYDRA and its affiliates over to Steve and Sam. He doesn’t watch the news but hears through the grapevine that people are being arrested or killed or taken down, and slowly, Clint watches as the entire organization he worked for for almost as long as he can remember is taken down around him. 

It’s fucking delightful.

He knows a few guys who worked for AIM, probably still do, and seeks them out, does some work for them, and sends information over to Sam, then watches as their departments inside AIM fold up and disappear. He knows a few guys who knew some guys who worked for Power Enterprises, and spends a month wheedling his way in and does some work for them, and then after he sends what he knows to Sam, Power Enterprises dries up in that town. He knows some people who supplied drugs and information and brainwashing techniques to HYDRA and they pay him for the privilege of spending a week doing whatever they want to him and he sends all the information to Sam, and a week later, they’re all dead or in jail.

He wonders if this is what it’s like being an Avenger, if this is what it’s like to do good in the world when all he’s ever done before this has been bad. He’s never brought good into the world before and it’s strange to make lives better for those around him instead of worse.

He thinks he’s being followed after a few months, and doesn’t really think anything of it. If there’s someone out there that cares what boring Clint Barton is up to, let them follow him. He’s not doing anything other than what he used to do under HYDRA anyway, and at least he’s getting well paid for it now. He’d been wrong that there was no money in being an inactive participant in sex, and a lot of the people from the old HYDRA circles are very willing to pay him well to have him bend over a table and fuck him until his legs are shaking. 

He does what he knows: find people, kill them, find information, sell it off to the highest bidder, get fucked when it's all over. He sends copies of everything to Sam and never hears back from him other than an email telling him he's doing a good job and that their correspondence out is probably monitored but that they're receiving his messages, but always hears in one way or another that the problem is taken care of. There’s rumors about Captain America being back, even without his shield, and Clint knows Cap and Falcon are taking care of everything that needs to be taken care of.

* * *

Clint lives like that for a year, and it’s not too bad. It’s not terrible, really. It’s nice to have a routine again. He stays busy enough that he doesn’t think about James, doesn’t think about his life before, doesn’t think about the fact that he wouldn’t have to be doing any of this if James hadn’t left him. He tries to work on himself, tries to think that he’s more than what he’s always been, but he knows better. Rumlow had called him an old whore and it’s all Clint knows.

He learns a lot about HYDRA, learns more about the organization’s goals and what else they did to people like him. He learns about the type of people HYDRA employed and he enjoys killing some of them. He goes on a few missions of his own where he takes a bit of vengeance for himself, cuts off their heads and dicks with swords for what they did to him. He finds retired HYDRA scientists and hacks into their computers and finds their old files and remembers a lot more than what he wants. There’s information out there on him, information that Clint never wanted other people to know, information that is still being bought and sold and he decides to use it to his advantage.

Natasha tracks a few of the files for him and sends him the information on the men who know things about him. Clint calls around, gets information, offers himself up, and they all want him, and they all fuck him fast and hard and rough and none of them last long. None of them realize it’s a trap, and they’re all dead from the moment Clint is invited into their homes. They all want to fuck the Winter Soldier’s slut, the most valuable Asset inside HYDRA, and Clint lets them, bends over like it’s all he wants, groans loudly like he wants it when they slide inside him, and then kills them the second they finish. He doesn’t think about the fact that he could kill them beforehand, doesn’t think that he lets them fuck him first because he deserves to be treated that way, that all he’s good for is sex. If he doesn’t let himself think about it then it doesn’t mean anything.

Whoever is following him follows him through all of that. If they gave a shit about him getting fucked by every man in the country then they could stop him. Clint doesn’t care at all.

He’s home between missions, resting his old bones and letting his body heal from the last man who’d worked him over, when headlights flicker over the wall behind him. He’s reading a book on his tablet, one painful, slow word at a time, and he slowly puts it down and glances around to where he left his hearing aids, and remembers that he left them upstairs. He slips over the back of the couch and darts up the stairs, grabs his hearing aids and slides them in as he picks up his bow and quiver from his bedroom floor.

There’s heavy bootsteps on his porch and Clint stands in the shadows at the top of the stairs, arrow nocked and drawn back, and he waits. He’s patient. He’s a sniper; he can wait forever.

The front door opens and someone walks in.

It’s James. Of course it’s James.

He looks better. Healthy. His hair is short again, his skin is clear and his beard is shorn close to his face, and he has a new metal arm; it’s mostly black with threads of gold. It’s lovely, like the rest of him. He stops just a few steps inside the door and looks around. Clint’s hand shakes and he slowly lowers his bow. He’s not going to shoot James and he knows it. That’s probably why he’s here. Clint wonders if James is finally going to kill him for what Clint did to him for all those years. He wonders if he'd let him.

He lowers his bow, lets the arrow and his quiver clatter to the floor. James’s head swings around and then his eyes land immediately on Clint, who drops his bow to the floor and grabs onto the railing, glaring down at him.

“Get the fuck out,” Clint snarls. “Get the hell out of here, Barnes.”

“Let me talk,” James begs and Clint grimaces, face twisting up before he shakes his head. He knows he’ll listen to anything James says, fall for whatever sob story he uses before he kills Clint. He just wants it fucking over with if it’s going to happen, and wants James out of his goddamn life if he’s not going to kill him. He’s been doing just fine on his own and doesn’t need James here fucking it all up. “Clint, please.”

“You don’t have the right to ask anything of me,” Clint tells him, and from James’s wince, James knows he’s right. “You left me and then when I tried to help you, you raped me. Get the fuck out of my house before I kill you.”

“Like you’ve killed all those other men?” James asks.

Clint glares at him. “Yeah, like I killed all those other men,” he parrots meanly. “So you know I’m perfectly fucking capable of killing you too. All they did was fuck me once. You fucked me thousands of times.”

He can see the way James swallows at that. Clint moves slightly closer to the stairs, leaves his bow and arrows behind. James has to know the threat is empty by now; he’d be dead if he was anyone else. “Everything you’ve done has changed the world for the better,” James tells him. “I just wanted to tell you that you don’t need to anymore. That you can rest.”

Clint freezes, mind racing. Did James come here to kill him? He’d wondered it when he first realized who it was, but hadn’t _really_ thought—it would make sense, though, and if Clint had to choose a way, he supposes that he’d choose for James to kill him. If he has to go out at all, let it be by the man he loves.

He wonders if he should give up, if he should lay down at James’s feet and let him do it quick and easy. He wonders if he should fight, what will happen to him afterwards, if James will leave him or burn his house down or bury him. He wonders if a man like him deserves any end at all.

James watches him for a moment and then continues looking around. “It looks the same,” he offers up, and Clint wonders about that, if James really thought he’d change anything. He brought in a few purple things, a blanket and some plates and bowls and mugs and sheets, but nothing that would make James think he’s moved on or changed at all. Despite all his work otherwise, he's not the type that moves on. “Will you come down here, Clint? Please?”

It’s been over a year since Clint has heard his voice and his name on James’s lips is still the loveliest thing Clint has ever heard, so he goes. He sighs and walks down the stairs, stops at the bottom of them, truly and fully looks at James. He hasn’t seen him in over a year and by God, he looks so good. Clint hopes that whatever he’s been doing, he’s happy. That’s all he cares about.

“What do you want?” he sighs. If James is going to kill him, please just let him get it over with.

James looks at him, takes a few steps closer, and Clint stiffens up automatically. He won’t bend over for this man, not anymore. He might’ve let a lot of men fuck him over the past year but he knows how to say no now, too, and he doesn’t have a single goddamn compunction about telling James no. For a long moment, James doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, and Clint glares at him, which apparently prompts James to say, “I miss you.”

Clint rolls his eyes, snorts, moves past James to go into the kitchen, starts the coffee maker and doesn’t look at him. “Yeah, man, when I miss someone I usually avoid them for a year,” he snaps. “I know when I miss someone I never call or check up on them.”

James sighs and Clint doesn’t look back when he hears him move behind him. James sits down at the kitchen table and Clint curls his hands into fists on top of the counter. Fucking bastard. How _dare_ he.

“I couldn’t,” James tells him. “I...Clint, I couldn’t.”

“I don’t care,” Clint shoots back, turning around and glaring at him. “You left, James. I gave up my entire fucking life for you, I gave up _decades,_ and you still left. So go take yourself outside and fuck yourself.” The coffee maker beeps and he turns around, pours himself a cup, pointedly doesn’t pour James one. He curls the mug in his hands and leans back against the counter and glares at him.

“I left because you did that,” James replies, almost desperate. “I know what Steve told me was wrong, but I couldn’t just...Clint, all I knew was you. I woke up and all I thought about was you, and when I slept, I dreamt about you. Don’t you understand? I had to find myself without you.”

“So tell me!” Clint yells, suddenly furious, and he whips his mug at James, snarling and glaring at him, watching as the mug smashes into the chair next to James and hot coffee splashes all over him. “So _tell me that_ and then leave. Is that so hard?” Chest heaving, he points to the door. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

James wipes some of the coffee off himself with his hands and shakes his head. “I just want to talk,” he says.

“You had your chance a year ago when I left Wakanda. They told me you had the words out of your head and I waited for two days and when you didn’t come, I left. You didn’t come, James, so I knew I didn’t matter to you anymore, that I didn’t belong to you anymore, so I went my own way. I stopped waiting.” Clint narrows his eyes at him. “It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one following me.”

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew. I was more than just some quick fuck, you know. While you were in cryo, they trained me to be faster, better, stronger, all that bullshit. They couldn’t give the Winter Soldier to just some fucktoy, you know. I had to be just as good as you. Now, are you going to leave or what? You came here, you said your piece, now leave me alone.”

“I can’t,” James begs him, pushing to his feet. “Clint, I tried, and I can’t stop. I can’t. I miss you so much that it hurts. I thought I could find myself without you but I’m not a person without you. I thought I could but I can’t.”

“Good for you,” Clint says, and he moves past James and opens the front door. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

James gives him one more searching look and, shoulders slumped, walks through the door, but he holds out a hand and catches the door with his metal hand when Clint tries to slam it shut. “Please just...don’t let anyone else fuck you. _Please,_ Clint.”

Clint rolls his eyes and decides he’s gonna fuck everyone he meets until James gets the hint that Clint doesn’t belong to him anymore. “Get out of here,” he tells James again, who gives him one of his doe-eyed looks and drops his hand. Clint slams the door in his face and turns around and presses his hands to his face and screams into his palms. He hears James say his name but Clint slumps down to his knees, sags back against the door so James can’t open it, and takes in another breath and screams again.

The fucking _audacity_. Clint can barely believe it. How _dare_ James leave him and then refuse his help and then when he _did_ try to help, rape him for his efforts, and then when he leaves, stalk him for six months? Then when he finally takes a goddamn minute for himself, James shows up at his house and has the biggest balls of any human on the planet to ask him not to do the only thing he’s ever been really good at? Clint takes in a deep breath, squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that he sees little flashes of light, and drops his hands from his face. They’re shaking. His entire body is shaking. He feels like he’s going to puke, so he stumbles to his feet, staggers over to the kitchen sink, and gags up a mouthful of coffee and sour spittle and then he sags down and sobs.

How fucking _dare_ he.

Clint wants to wring James’s skinny little neck and also wants to put his own head under the guillotine and let James kill him. He just wants it to be over, whatever that means, however that looks. He’s just so fucking done with it all.

He makes sure all the doors and windows are locked, pulls all the blinds and curtains, and turns off all the lights. He sits in the dark kitchen for a few hours, just listening and waiting for James to break in, and when nothing happens, not even a noise or a flash of light or anything, Clint goes upstairs and barricades himself in his room. He knows it’s useless—the Soldier has hunted him this far, after all, and Clint knows a dresser pushed up against the door won’t stop him if he really wants Clint—but it makes him feel better. He sits in his bed, knives in both of his hands, and nods off eventually, jerking awake every now and then, and then he wakes up when the sun is up.

When he jerks his bedroom door open, he gets a whiff of coffee, and he puts in his hearing aids and goes downstairs to find that there’s a fresh cup of coffee sitting on the kitchen table. He takes it outside and dumps it out in the grass and then puts the cup down on the porch and pulls out his dick and pisses in it. He can feel James watching him and Clint knows he got the message. Asshole.

He leaves the next day for another mission. It’s easy, just a bit of recon for a guy who wants his dick sucked, and Clint does the first part with no enthusiasm and the second with as much enthusiasm as he can muster. He can feel James watching him, can feel those blue eyes boring into him, and when he’s done, he grins nastily out into the dark. He’ll fuck anyone he goddamn well wants.

James follows him all over the country for the next few months. He’s not subtle about it, either, and Clint doesn’t give a shit. He keeps doing his thing, gets paid for it, and James follows him around. He ends up getting so bored of being stalked that he waits until he’s done with his next mission and tells James that if he’s going to follow him then James better well help him out. The jackass says he won’t help if Clint is fucking every man he meets, so Clint tells him to go fuck himself, loses him, and when James finds him again, he’s fucking a woman outside of some bar. That shuts James up for awhile.

It’s kind of a weird experience, actually, having sex with a woman. He has to be a lot more of an active participant, and this one is so _wet_ , and there’s just so much happening, but he does his best to make it good. Going by the way she holds onto him and shakes and the sly look she gives him afterwards, his best is more than good enough. Turns out sex is pretty enjoyable when he wants to do it.

He does start to feel bad, though, which pisses him off. James doesn’t fucking deserve Clint or his fidelity. James doesn’t even deserve Clint thinking about him, much less losing his erection because he knows James is watching him try to fuck a different woman in a different alley. But then he thinks about James, thinks about James fucking him while he’s fucking someone else, and that gets him going enough that he pushes her against the rough wall and slides into her and it’s hot and tight and he shivers at the feel of the two eyes digging into the back of his neck. He wonders if James is getting turned on, if James is thinking the same thing, if James wants to rip Clint out of her and have his way with him, show him who he belongs to. Clint thinks about that and moans and slides his hand down the front of her and rubs at her clit so she orgasms and so he doesn’t feel so bad about getting off so quickly because James is watching him.

The next morning, James is sitting in Clint’s motel room, two cups of coffee in front of him. He looks tired. Clint rolls over in bed, rubs at his face, gets up, goes to the bathroom, and while he’s washing his hands, he wonders what he should do. He could keep fighting this, and he could spend the rest of his life running. That’s the plan, actually. Or he could change the plan and he could turn around and meet his destiny head on, and he and James could fucking figure this shit out.

He sits down across from James and takes his coffee, doesn’t say anything. James just watches him, and Clint watches him back. He’s not the same man who dedicated every breath to the Soldier. But that man isn’t so different from who he is now, and they both know that. James gets up and gets Clint’s hearing aids from his nightstand, holds them out for him. Clint looks up at him, searches his face, and takes them.

“I miss you,” he hears once he slides them in and turns them on. Clint looks away from him. “I know I’ve done wrong by you, Clint, but please stop this.”

He shifts uncomfortably. “You don’t have any right,” he mutters, and takes an angry sip of coffee while James sits back down. “You lost any right to tell me what to do when you left me.”

James gives him a considering look and Clint grimaces, doesn’t try to hide it. “How about this?” James offers up. “You left Wakanda over a year ago. You’ve been on your own for that long. If you don’t think I have any claim to you, if you don’t think you belong to me anymore, you would’ve gotten that tattoo removed. Hell, you would’ve gone back to Wakanda and gotten those scars I left removed.”

“I got some of the scars removed,” Clint grumbles out, heart fluttering rebelliously in his chest.

“Not the bite ones,” James reminds him. “You got the internal scars removed, but you told Shuri to leave the bite scars. I know why, too. Same with why you never let any of those blokes or dames see you with your shirt off.” He leans across the rickety table and grabs Clint’s hand before Clint can snatch it back. “If you got the tattoo removed, Clint, I’ll leave.”

“For Captain America’s best friend, you sure are an asshole.”

James grins. “Come on,” he wheedles, thumb stroking the back of Clint’s hand. “Just let me see.”

He tries to bolt anyway, but James is faster than him, always has been, and he pins Clint down to the bed. Clint tries to scramble out from underneath him, but James keeps him down with his metal hand on his chest, and Clint snarls, “Why don’t you just yank my pants down and check? You always just take what you want anyway.”

James jerks back from him like Clint burned him. Clint darts up the bed, curls up against the headboard, and then he slowly raises up his sweatpant leg and twists his leg out so James can see that yeah, he still has the asset tag tattoo. James sits back down and Clint wraps his arms around his legs. “I’m sorry,” James tells him, voice quiet. “I keep on messing up. I just want to make it up to you and go back to the way things were.”

“You don’t get to decide how things are,” Clint tells him, and then after looking at James’s crestfallen face, he asks, “How much do you remember?”

James shifts his weight in his chair and shakes his head. Clint misses his long hair. “Less than I want, more than I want,” he sighs. “I know you were young.”

“I was a _kid_. I was fifteen. Do you remember what you _did?_ ”

“I nearly killed you,” James breathes out, sags forward to hang his head in his hands. “I remember feeling so out of control and so _angry_ and they kept giving me people and I couldn’t control myself enough to stop hurting any of them. I remember looking up and they shoved you in and you were so scared but you still glared at me and told me I wasn’t going to hurt you. And then I hurt you anyway.”

“Say it,” Clint grits out. “Say what you did to me.”

“I raped you,” James says, lifting his head, voice low and blank. “You were just a kid and I raped you.”

Clint sighs. It doesn’t really feel good to hear it; he kind of thought it would take a weight off his chest or something, but everything just feels the same. “Not only then,” he reminds James, who nods slowly, “but every single time after that, too. I didn’t start kind of enjoying it until you calmed down, which took about five years. But that doesn’t mean I wanted it. I didn’t want any of it.”

James nods. “I know. Neither did I.”

Clint meets his gaze. James looks back at him, calmly, sure of himself, and Clint wonders how James has dealt with what happened to him so much better than Clint has. HYDRA had him for over 70 years, but then again, he was in cryo for a lot of that. Clint was awake and screaming for every single one of his two decades with HYDRA. He didn’t have the reprieve of cryo. He never got a break; life was hell for him for over twenty years. He thinks about how they were pushed together for a greater goal, a goal neither of them had any say in. He thinks about James and the Soldier and both of them being so out of control and Clint being the only one who could calm him down, how that must feel for the man sitting across from him. He thinks about how James must feel knowing that he never wanted it either but he needs Clint like he needs air.

He knows what he’s going to decide. He already knew from the beginning what he would choose, and he’s always chosen James. He’s spent over twenty years choosing James. His throat is dry and he swallows and he croaks out, “I don’t want to keep running.”

James smiles at him, slight and relieved. “I’ll give you a reason to stop.”

Clint nods slowly. “If you hurt me again, I’ll kill you.”

“If I hurt you again, I’ll kill myself.”

* * *

They move back home. It takes a month of James sleeping in one of the guest rooms before Clint just pulls him into the master bedroom and curls up in his arms and finally sleeps soundly for the first time in nearly two years. It takes a month after that for James to lean over while they’re watching TV and to tilt Clint’s chin up and kiss him. They go for walks in the fields and woods around their house and Clint gets a dog, names him Lucky, and makes a bunch of jokes about how Bucky sounds like a dog's name. James just indulgently rolls his eyes at him and smiles.

It’s hard. James still scares the shit out of Clint sometimes; he’s still quiet, too quiet, and he still has his tendency to push Clint up against walls and pin him there, and it scares the fuck out of him every time. But James is getting better at reading him—Clint isn’t putting on a front anymore, and he’s not acting like he used to, and he exists for more than one reason now, so he doesn’t have to pretend like every touch is welcome or like he’s made for James bending him over and James seems to appreciate that—and he’s restraining his instincts to force Clint into doing what he wants. He still scares Clint sometimes but Clint appreciates the effort he's making.

Sometimes Clint thinks there’s too much history between them for anything to work. Sometimes he thinks that he’ll never be able to look at James and see anyone other than the Soldier, but then he’ll wake up and James is already downstairs and he’s swearing at the toaster and Clint leans against the wall and just watches him and knows that it's getting better. Sometimes James does things the exact way the Soldier did them, or he’ll get a look on his face that takes Clint back so hard and fast that he feels like he has whiplash, and it’s all he can do not to run. But James tries, and that’s all Clint can ask for.

They do their best. They curl up together on the couch, Clint’s head either buried in James’s chest or James curled up so his nose is pressed to Clint’s neck, and watch TV together. They formally announce their retirement—Clint tells Natasha, who tells him that she’s been expecting it and that she’s happy for him, and James tells Steve, who is kind of annoyed until Sam comes on the call and tells him to calm down and then Steve sighs and tells James that he’s happy for him, and Clint is pretty sure he even means it—and then they spend most of their days playing with the dog and not talking about what they need to talk about.

One morning, James is waiting for him in the kitchen, a fresh cup of coffee waiting for Clint on the other side of the table. Clint sighs at him and takes his seat. “What is it?” he asks, sipping at his coffee. “You look tired.”

“Haven’t been sleeping,” James tells him. “I get nightmares.”

“You should wake me up when that happens,” Clint replies, and he means it. “At the very least, we can be sleep-deprived together.” They both look up as Lucky jumps down the stairs and runs outside through the dog door. It’d taken the two of them an entire afternoon to install that but it was worth the arguing and the swearing and the whole process being a pain in the ass. “What’s wrong, James?”

“I get nightmares,” James repeats. “But a lot of them are memories. Sometimes they’re the only way I remember anything. I just...I keep dreaming about the first time I met you. I don’t think...I don’t think I wanted it either. I just wanted it to be over but I felt like a wild animal and the way you looked at me, the way you smelled…” He trails off, shakes his head. “I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t in control.”

Clint nods sympathetically. “I know,” he tells him. “It wasn’t your fault. We were both victims.”

“But I still _did it,_ ” James continues, not looking at him. “I did all of it. I killed all of those people for them, hurt all those people, I killed people because they touched you, and I think that’s the only part of it I wouldn’t change. All I know is that every single time I look at you, everything else fades away, and you’re all that matters.”

Clint smiles at him and leans across the table to grab James’s metal hand, and James finally looks at him. “I love you too," he says gently as he can. He pauses, and then says, “The reason I brought you here in the first place is that you were always my endgame. I had hoped that one day, during all that time, that we’d get out from under HYDRA, and we’d come here and live away from everyone else. It was all I ever wanted.”

James nods. “Good,” he sighs. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, man, anything.”

“You said there were protection protocols in place to keep me from hurting you. So why would I rape you?”

“Heavy talk for breakfast,” Clint mutters, pulling back, and he looks down into his cup of coffee. “The protection protocols were only to keep me from getting killed or seriously hurt. And they weren’t to keep me safe from _you_ , they were to keep me safe from everyone else.”

“Oh,” James murmurs. Clint frowns at him.

“Why'd you ask?”

“I’d thought that maybe they put those in me because I was too rough with you or something.”

Clint snorts. “No, man, they didn’t care how rough you were with me. That was the point. That’s what made you stay calm enough that they could control you again. They put in the protocols because they needed to make sure I stayed alive no matter what, and you’re basically the best bodyguard on the planet.”

James smiles slightly at that. “I remember you telling that to Steve.”

Clint freezes and then frowns. “Wait, you overheard that? And you still left?”

“I left because Steve convinced me you were lying,” James sighs. “And I shouldn’t have listened to him. I should’ve trusted you. But I think I was looking for a reason and Steve gave me one.”

“You could’ve just asked, you know. I would’ve told you whatever you wanted to know.” He hopes the wound from James leaving him will scar over soon, but they seem to keep opening it up and making him bitter and angry again. “It doesn’t matter, James. You’re back home and that’s all that’s important.” He gets up to go make more coffee but James’s voice stops him.

“No, it is important,” James presses and Clint sits back down to listen to him. “I made a mistake and you’re still hurt from it. I never recognized how much work you put into taking care of me, and that’s my fault. I couldn’t at the time, of course, but I should’ve realized later, once we were away from HYDRA. I just thought that that was your job. I didn’t realize how much it hurt you to do that. I realize it now, but I’m just sorry it took me so long. I just...doll, I don’t know what to do without you. I feel like the world is always spinning away around me and you’re the only thing that makes it stop. I just don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am that I hurt you so badly and I think I keep doing it.”

“How about this?” Clint offers up, meeting James’s gaze and then getting up to move around the table. James stays sitting while Clint steps up next to him, cups James’s jaw in his palms, tilts his chin up so Clint can look over his familiar, dear face. “You spend the rest of our lives making it up to me.”

“That works for me,” James smiles, and Clint leans down and kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to everyone who came on this journey with me. hope you enjoyed it and that i answered all of your questions. this is the ending i had planned from the start but i did consider making it clint/sam and ultimately decided against it. sure am considering it for a future fic though! please check out some of my other mcu fics, and please leave kudos and reviews. thanks again!
> 
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